Suppose someone unifies the four fundamental forces, will his status surpass that of Newton and Einstein?
Universal Law
Unification is essential for today's physical scientists, which will bring new perspectives to humanity. More than 300 years ago, Newton proposed the law of universal gravitation, providing people with a new vision of the breadth of space and the motion of objects. Newton and universal gravitation After more than 100 years, when physics was stagnant, Einstein made a new elaboration on several major forces in the physical world based on his predecessors, and proposed the concept of relativity. The concept of absolute time is broken, and a new theoretical ladder once again takes humanity to a new level. If the special theory of relativity in the early 20th century was brought into existence because of the original contradictions of classical physics, a large number of new experiments and extensive attention. Then the general theory of relativity is proposed in a sense that the theory is ahead of the experiment, and now the theory of relativity has become a basic subject guiding physics and many studies. Einstein, the master of modern physics, but today, the physical world constructed by quantum mechanics and the standard model has once again encountered difficulties, and the four fundamental forces cannot be completely unified, which also makes the development of modern physics today appear to be very slow. Regarding the four fundamental forces, past research has made all this clear. The first is the gravitational force discovered by Newton. Gravity exists in every corner and has a wide range, but the gravitational force is very weak. The gravitational force between matter needs to have a large enough mass to be manifested. The weak nuclear force (weak force), which is caused by radioactive decay and the interaction of neutrinos, has a small area of influence. True to its name, the weak nuclear force is weak, and the weak force causes beta decay. That is, neutrons are converted into protons, electrons and antineutrinos. The third of the four fundamental forces is the electromagnetic force. The electromagnetic force was truly unified after Maxwell and was integrated into the theory of relativity by Einstein. Electric and magnetic effects caused by electromagnetic forces, such as the repulsion between electric charges or the interaction of bar magnets. Electromagnetic force is a long-range force, but much weaker than the strong one. The electromagnetic force exhibited by the electromagnetic spectrum can attract or repel, and only works between charged substances. Electricity, magnetism and light are all produced by this force. The most powerful is the nuclear force (strong force), which, despite its short range, is very powerful in its strong interactions. It is responsible for holding atomic nuclei together, and the same charged protons attract each other due to the nuclear force. Electromagnetic forces hold matter together, but do not explain how atomic nuclei are held together in atoms. If only electromagnetism and gravity are considered, the nuclei should actually be flying in different directions. But this is not the case, which means that there is another force in the nucleus stronger than gravity and electromagnetism, and this is where the nuclear force comes into play. When two particles interact by force, they do so by exchanging gluons. Thus, the quarks inside protons and neutrons are held together by the exchange of the strong nuclear force. Behavior of the strong interaction When they are close together, the quarks experience very little force. But if they were to be separated, the strong nuclear force would bring them back together. It takes far more energy to completely separate two quarks than any particle accelerator can provide. The force of disunity
From what scientists have studied in the past, the strong force is the strongest of all four fundamental interactions. The three fundamental forces are generated by the exchange of force-carrying particles, and they belong to a broader concept called "bosons". Matter particles transfer discrete amounts of energy by exchanging bosons with each other. The Higgs boson, the branch of the quantum force field represents that every fundamental force has a corresponding boson, the strong force is carried by gluons, the electromagnetic force is carried by photons, and the W and Z bosons are responsible for the weak force. Until today, scientists still haven't fully figured out the bearing particles of gravity, but scientists believe that "gravitons" should be the corresponding bearing capacity of gravity. Why the Unification of Forces Is Emphasized Today Simply put, it's a theory that correctly describes what the world we live in really is like. Unification of forces and models can provide scientists with more perspectives to study questions that cannot be answered today, such as the Big Bang, antimatter, dark energy, and more. Large Hadron Collider Particle Detector Data Over the past few decades, scientists have made continuous efforts to unify the three fundamental forces, which are called the "Standard Model". The Standard Model is the crystal ball for scientists, predicting what the particles of the fundamental forces look like. Predict new particles and then experiment to verify them. Scientists' discovery of new particles ultimately requires a model to divide all elementary particles according to their inherent properties. Not only does the Standard Model arrange these particles, but it also provides a way to explain the fundamental forces of nature, and their corresponding force carriers. The particle electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force in the Standard Model of particle physics are very self-consistent in the process of unified combination, and have now been confirmed in the scientific community. In the Standard Model, electromagnetic interactions are described by quantum electrodynamics; the weak force is explained in terms of the weak theory, which states that the weak and electromagnetic interactions combine into a single electroweak interaction at high energies; in the weak nuclear force The radioactive decay force of the strong interaction is described by quantum chromodynamics, which is part of the Standard Model. In gravity, however, there is no standard model to describe gravity, although scientists have been in contact with it for a long time. Because contradictions can arise in conjunction with general relativity, modern gravitational theory, and quantum mechanics, and its performance on the microscopic scale is so weak that it is intrinsically unmeasurable. Deuterium atoms in quantum chromodynamics So the Standard Model still cannot explain what dark matter is, why there are three generations of quarks and leptons with different mass scales, and so on. In order to complete the basic unification of the four forces, scientists are preparing to construct a grand unified theory. Grand Unification
The Grand Unified Theory is a model in particle physics (in fact there is not only one unified theory about the fundamental forces, but the grand unified theory speaking, this is perhaps the most likely outcome in the future) the 3 gauge interactions in the high-energy state merge into a single force. Can macro and micro finally be unified? Although this unifying force has not been directly observed, many grand unification models theorize its existence. If the unification of these three interactions is possible, it might explain the possibility of a grand unification era in the very early universe. Because the fundamental forces are "dispersed" in today's universe, scientists believe these forces were unified before the Big Bang. The unresolved question in contemporary physics is precisely the question of the origin and nature of the world. Experiments have shown that neutrinos have mass, but this is not allowed by the classical Standard Model. Feynman diagrams illustrating the interactions of electromagnetic particles Ultimately, theoretical and experimental research extended the entire Standard Model into a unified field theory, or the theory of everything. But the downside is that the model doesn't account for gravity, and as mentioned earlier, the Standard Model cannot be used in general relativity and quantum field theory. In modern research, scientists put further explanations of the Standard Model in hadron collider experiments, which may bring more observations to scientists in the future, and finally find the missing parts of the Standard Model. Hadron Collider Laboratory So back to the final question, if someone unifies the four fundamental forces, can his status surpass that of Newton and Einstein. The answer is yes, but not entirely. It should be noted that the framework of modern physics today can be said to be derived from Newton, and Einstein, on the basis of his predecessors, almost completed the prediction and description of the three forces by his own strength. These two scientists are epoch-making pioneers. Why do you say that Newton's physical system failed after Einstein? Scientists today will look farther. Classical models have been unable to explain more complex quantum problems and electromagnetic forces, and it was Einstein who gave them a new description. So from this level, Einstein is great, he surpasses his predecessors. But without the efforts of Newton and others, Einstein would have much work to do. So from this perspective, Einstein is also the genius standing on the shoulders of giants. In other words, whether someone who unifies the four fundamental forces can surpass Newton and Einstein depends on their position in people's minds.