- Nov 13, 2017
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Anyone have any thoughts on this?
We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature:
Read more: We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature
We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature
There may be a paywall but the article is quite long so I'll post a couple of main points here:
But we don’t know what new actor to expect, other than a quantum force. This tallies with the idea that even if gravity can’t yet be described in quantum terms, most physicists believe it eventually will be, in a long sought after marrying of relativity and quantum field theory. “Any sensible physicist believes gravity’s force-carrying particle exists,” says Frank Wilczek, a particle theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won a share of a Nobel prize in physics for the quantum theory behind the strong nuclear force. Follow that logic and any fifth force has to be quantum, too.
...It is known as a chameleon force, and the idea is that the particle transmitting it changes its mass depending on the local density of matter. Chameleon particles would be heavier where the average matter density is high, as for example around Earth, meaning the force associated with them would have a smaller range in our neighbourhood and so would be practically invisible to us. The mass of these particles would be much smaller in the vast swathes of empty space between galaxies, where they would have a larger range of influence – just the ticket to explain the dark-energy effect of distant galaxies racing away from us ever faster.
“It is not quite as strange as it sounds,” says Burrage, pointing out that the massless photon undergoes a similar metamorphosis when passing through a plasma of charged particles, experiencing a drag and effectively gaining mass. Wilczek agrees in principle, while being sceptical of the models themselves. “That sort of thing is allowed by the rules of quantum field theory,” he says...“There have been some attempts to see if the chameleon can play a role on galaxy and galaxy cluster scales, maybe replacing some of the need for dark matter,” says Burrage. Indications so far, however, seem to suggest that chameleon forces can’t explain all the effects we ascribe to dark matter.
Anyhow, rather than a unification of forces, the smart money is on diversification. With the four fundamental forces we already have, we have contrived to explain only normal atomic matter, which appears to make up only 5 per cent of the matter and energy in the universe. “It seems unlikely that all the vast majority of the universe would be made of just one or two components,” says Brax. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we find more than one new force.”
All these efforts speak to a wider truth, says Brax: that what we have now with our standard cosmological model is akin to a rough draft of the script for the story of the universe. “To embed our model in something larger, something we could call a theory, usually that involves new particles or fields, and those are going to give you new forces,” he says.
We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature:
Read more: We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature
We have seen hints of a new fundamental force of nature
There may be a paywall but the article is quite long so I'll post a couple of main points here:
But we don’t know what new actor to expect, other than a quantum force. This tallies with the idea that even if gravity can’t yet be described in quantum terms, most physicists believe it eventually will be, in a long sought after marrying of relativity and quantum field theory. “Any sensible physicist believes gravity’s force-carrying particle exists,” says Frank Wilczek, a particle theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won a share of a Nobel prize in physics for the quantum theory behind the strong nuclear force. Follow that logic and any fifth force has to be quantum, too.
...It is known as a chameleon force, and the idea is that the particle transmitting it changes its mass depending on the local density of matter. Chameleon particles would be heavier where the average matter density is high, as for example around Earth, meaning the force associated with them would have a smaller range in our neighbourhood and so would be practically invisible to us. The mass of these particles would be much smaller in the vast swathes of empty space between galaxies, where they would have a larger range of influence – just the ticket to explain the dark-energy effect of distant galaxies racing away from us ever faster.
“It is not quite as strange as it sounds,” says Burrage, pointing out that the massless photon undergoes a similar metamorphosis when passing through a plasma of charged particles, experiencing a drag and effectively gaining mass. Wilczek agrees in principle, while being sceptical of the models themselves. “That sort of thing is allowed by the rules of quantum field theory,” he says...“There have been some attempts to see if the chameleon can play a role on galaxy and galaxy cluster scales, maybe replacing some of the need for dark matter,” says Burrage. Indications so far, however, seem to suggest that chameleon forces can’t explain all the effects we ascribe to dark matter.
Anyhow, rather than a unification of forces, the smart money is on diversification. With the four fundamental forces we already have, we have contrived to explain only normal atomic matter, which appears to make up only 5 per cent of the matter and energy in the universe. “It seems unlikely that all the vast majority of the universe would be made of just one or two components,” says Brax. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we find more than one new force.”
All these efforts speak to a wider truth, says Brax: that what we have now with our standard cosmological model is akin to a rough draft of the script for the story of the universe. “To embed our model in something larger, something we could call a theory, usually that involves new particles or fields, and those are going to give you new forces,” he says.