WHY has nobody unified the 4 fundamental forces? What are the KEY differences?

Question

I know what they are, where they apply but I can't see why they are seperated into 4 different categories? Is it not all the same force in different concentrations?

Answer 1

The most likely reason would be that they are NOT aspects of the same single force. The more we learn about them, the less likely it seems that they are related.

What scientists are most trying to unify is the laws of physics. Classical Newtonian physics works at the everyday scale. Extend that with relativity and it works on the cosmic scale. But only quantum mechanics works on its scale, and so far we can't reconcile it with the classical or relativistic. And then there's gravity. Relativity has its own view of gravity, but theories of quantum gravity are in their infancy. Electromagnetism is already well unified with QED (quantum electrodynamics) and QCD (quantum chromodynamics). I don't know enough about the strong and weak nuclear forces to comment on them, and I'm not sure anyone else does.

Answer 2

Once all forces were one. That occurred shortly after the big bang. But then, almost immediately, the universe began to cool. And that primoridal amorphous bundle of energy began to gel out distinct particles, including energy particles and mass particles. In the end, a matter of seconds after the BB, the universe gelled out four fundamental forces: weak and strong atomic, gravity, and electro-magnetic (EM).

There are four forces because, when physicist started breaking all forces down into their basic components, they discovered there were but four basic components. And those are the four we call the four fundamental forces. Think of it, when you push the pedal to the floor in your Porshe, there are only four forces at work when observed at the basic level of forces.

If you believe string/M theory [See source.], these four forces are in fact the same thing, strings, but at different frequencies...not concentrations. Further, all mass in our known universe is also made up of strings vribrating at different frequencies. That is, literally everything in the universe, all mass and energy, is made up of tiny tiny strings that are infinitely thin and 10^-33 cm long. The frequencies determine how strings will appear in our 4 dimensional universe.

The main reason the four fundamental forces have not been unified in the lab is found in one word...energy. [String/M theory does unify them theorectically however.] When they were unified as one force very shortly after the BB, the universe temperature was trillions of degrees Kelvin...way hotter than our Sun To get the four back together again, even for an instant, we'd need enormous energy (temperature) that our current state of technology cannot create.

Answer 3

Not concentrations, no. It's more like chemical bonds. You got covalent bonds, Van-der-Waals forces, ionic bonds etc.. All, of course, are the result of quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. And if you ever take a class on quantum chemistry, you will learn how difficult it is to quantitatively calculate chemical bonds from first principles, even though we know the exact equations.

Same here... except that we don't even know the equations to begin with.

Answer 4

Now, they are trying to achieve that. But the gravity force is not clearly understood.

Answer 5

what