The Four Fundamental Forces (4K)

gravity atoms and light these are essential components in rendering the universe as we experience it today both on Earth and out in the Stars we see a wide variety of physical processes and reactions responsible for making things happen in space but all of them can be boiled down to just four fundamental forces of nature which wrote the laws of physics during the earliest increments of time gravity is one of these fundamental interactions while light makes up parts of another and by understanding all four we engage comprehensive insights into the true workings of our reality from

its tiniest particles to its largest galaxies and in this video we'll be doing just that unraveling the mysteries of the forces of nature examining their behaviors Origins and their overall effects on the young universe it's a wild ride that will take us all the way back to the beginning of time so get ready as we immerse ourselves in the Essences which bind the cosmos together the four fundamental [Music] forces as mentioned there are four types of fundamental interactions implementing the laws of physics in the universe today most evidently there is gravity the mysterious force of

attraction holding together the cosmic web and keeping celestial objects such as planets bound then there are the two nuclear forces one which glues atoms together and another which breaks them apart and finally we have electromagnetism the pallet painting the universe with a plethora of radiation including the visible light Illuminating our every day lives together these four forces facilitate the breadth of interactions playing out in space each mediated by their own type of elusive Force carrying particle known as a Bosa a messenger particle which acts as an agent for its Force's Behavior the wellestablished and rigorously

tested standard model of particle physics the science found in textbooks classrooms and libraries describes bosonic particles for three of these four forces the three gauge forces influencing atoms in the quantum domain for which we have a wealth of understanding but when it comes to gravity the standard model comes up short offering no explanation for its mechanisms for that we must turn to Albert Einstein and his 1915 general theory of relativity this set of rules and equations which stands out as his grandest achievement informs the basis for our modern-day understanding of gravity and it has passed

many empirical and laboratory experiments the problem however is that relativity is a classical Theory and not a quantum mechanical Theory which can tell us about the behavior of particles rather I Einstein modeled gravity as curvature waves within a field of mass never explicitly invoking a bosen to carry the gravitational force and though this so-called graviton particle is believed to be lurking out there somewhere in the background of space it has never been observed in practice and is invisible to the majority of Earthbound experiments as a result no one has yet been able to reconcile the

behavior of gravity on a particle LEL to those of the three gauge forces given by the standard model to do so would be to unify two at odds areas of Science in a grand overarching Theory of Everything which can mathematically explain the nature of all four fundamental forces concurrently in the meantime however the field of quantum gravity or how it works in terms of particles remains one of the major sticking points in modern cosmology indeed gravity is the most elusive of the fundamental interactions whose mechanisms are shrouded in secrecy despite being the weakest Force by

far it still maintains the widest reach and greatest range neither does it require anything fancy to get it going such as light or heat all we need is mass mass invokes interactions with the gravitational force and thus if you have mass you have gravity as such it has played an outsized role in sculpting the universe for almost 14 billion years ensuring the stability of space on the largest scales and yet its workings are plagued by enigmatic contradictions and unanswered questions which cast doubt over our most basic assumptions of the force on local scales some 85%

of the mass calculated to be required for building up galaxies and Galaxy clusters is missing thought to owe to an invisible undiscovered particle known as dark matter which has been seen acting as the skeleton of space but has never been observed directly and then on macro Universal scales where gravity has been the dominating Force for billions of years it now seems that that is no longer the case as the cosmic web is being pried apart at an accelerating rate by a strange anti-gravity component of the force nicknamed dark energy which has also never been conclusively

identified these contradictions along with the apparent absence of an Associated bosin leave gravity as by far the biggest outlier in our understanding of cosmology as a result we cannot resolve its origins in the very early Universe to the Grand unified force it was born with as mentioned the three other gauge forces electromagnetism and the two nuclear interactions can all be explained using the science of the standard model and if they each have a shared science it's likely they may also have a shared nature as distinct extensions of the same overbearing progenitor Force if this is

the case then there should be an arbitrarily high temperature at which the gauge forces would unify their behaviors with particles of both matter and light so greatly energized their distinctions literally Melt Away yielding a grand unified Force handling all three types of particle interactions such temperatures would have existed only just after the birth of the universe when it first assumed a finite size and temperature at Time Zero the infant Cosmos would have popped into existence resembling a singularity with all the contents of the modern-day Universe compressed into an area orders of magnitude less voluminous than

even the smallest subatomic particles burning at plank scale temperatures but barely a fraction of a microsc later the microscopic Universe was expanding and evolving its contents cooling as they were spread over a continually increasing volume and merely 10 to the power of- 43 seconds after its Inception the temperature of space had fallen to some 10 to the power of 32 Kelvin the point at which things started to happen as the fundamental forces were the first first to establish themselves during the boot sequence of the Big Bang in the beginning there were two fundamental forces one

was gravity as mentioned we cannot resolve its nature to the standard model and so we cannot be sure whether there exists a temperature energy at which Its Behavior would unify with the gauge forces either way however it would have been at this point during the grand unification Epoch where gravity emerged as its own distinct Force which immediately settled into the background of space leaving only its counterpart the electron nuclear force to dominate the behavior of the young universe if such a force existed then it would likely have been mediated by its own type of bosonic

particle hypothetical X and Y bosens the true so-called God particles of the Primeval age very little is known about their properties or the role they would have played but they soon disappeared in any case as they were harvested to make way for more conventional bosens like the higs boson as the grand unified Force became unstable just 10 to the power of minus 36 seconds after Universal Inception its temperature continued to fall below 10 to the power of 28 Kelvin apparently beneath the unification energy required to merge the gauge forces as a result the grand unification

Epoch of the universe Drew to a close as the electron nuclear force split via a process of symmetry breaking yielding two new distinct forces the strong force and the electro weak Force though the grand unified Force remains an elusive theoretical concept the basis for an electro weak Force bridging electromagnetism and weak interactions was put on solid scientific footing in the 1960s as one of the key revelations in establishing the Contemporary standard model it decayed from the electron nuclear force to kick off the electro weak Epoch of the young universe setting in motion a chain of

events that would leave it unrecognizable by the turn of the next era as the Essences of gravity strong interactions and the electro weak Force SWR their coexistence gave rise to a so-called vacuum pressure field which Unleashed a radical resizing event on the microscopic Cosmos slingshotting it on rots towards the immeasurable volume we know of today starting at 10 to the the power of - 33 seconds after time Z the Primeval Universe was scaled up by at least a factor of 26 like stretching a nanometer to the length of a light Cher in just a fraction

of a second culminating at 10 the power ofus 32 seconds on the clock this Cosmic inflation completely transformed the young universe while also cooling it further to a more modest 10 to the power of 22 Kelvin at this point the mysterious energy field powering inflation subsided before decaying into a sea of energy where the events associated with more classical descriptions of The Big Bang Theory ensued and by 10 to the power ofus 12 seconds of time this inflationary energy had condensed into a plasma containing the universe's first particles of matter known as quarks intersect Ed

by gluons the mediators of the newly awoken strong nuclear force the strong force is the second of our contemporary fundamental forces coming into effect only just after gravity in the events of the early universe as its name implies it is by far the most powerful of the forces a whopping tend to the power of 38 times stronger than gravity in fact but there's a catch because the strong force only operates over a very limited range of distances on microscopic scales of one femometer the typical size of an atomic nucleus indeed the strong force is the

glue which holds together the Cordes of atoms whereas gravity is the large scale Force of Attraction strong interactions hold nature together at an atomic level ensuring the key components of our bodies neither dissipate nor collapse into something denser within the nucleus of an atom subatomic proton and neutron particles are glued together by the strong force mediated by the gluon particle under a grip incomparably tighter than gravities forming the bases for a wide variety of exotic substances including the many elements and metals of the periodic table on scales larger than a nucleus the strong force is

an attractor like gravity however at smaller scales and even greater compressions it switches roles and begins working as a repeller as subatomic particles packed too tightly yield a degeneracy pressure by agency of the strong force this ensures the hearts of atoms neither break apart under any reasonable Force nor compact so tightly that their structures are lost as they merge it is also the same phenomenon holding up the cause of neutron stars as huge quantities of neutron degeneracy pressure prevent the mass of up to two suns from collapsing completely into a black hole protons and neutrons

these core constit ENT particles are both types of hadrons whose internal structure is an aggregation of two or more quarks the primordial Elementary particles we discussed earlier which abound by the strong force around 10 to the power of minus 12 seconds after the birth of the universe the Quark Epoch commenced as the first pixels of matter began appearing in the ocean of plasma and over over the course of the next second these Quark particles would be mediated by the strong force into aggregations of hyrons the original building blocks in the universe's first atoms but before

they could get started another event of symmetry breaking would see the four types of interactions as we know them today established once the temperature of space fell below a quadrillion Kelvin the electro weak Force broke apart giving way to both electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force the weak force is the second type of nuclear interaction influencing atoms and particles but unlike the strong force which builds them up the weaker force is the force of Decay as structures are broken apart to yield new part particles and energy as implied by its name this force is significantly

weaker than its counterpart and operates over an even shorter range this is because the weak force is mediated by w+ minus and znort bosons all of which are dozens of times more massive than a proton severely constraining their range to just 1/10th the width of an atomic nucleus and yet they are the catalysts in some of the weirdest most wonderful and important physical processes playing out both right here at home and out there in the stars the weak nuclear force is the only one capable of changing the so-called flavor of Elementary particles converting them in

processes such as beta Decay two of the best known weak interactions are beta minus Decay when a a neutron is broken down into a proton electron and anti-neutrino and beta plus Decay where the roles are reversed as a proton gives way to an electron a positron and an electron neutrino if that was hard to understand just know that this ability to transition the fundamental building blocks of nature to their various other types and States gives the weak force a hand in all manner of natural processes from the effici occurring in power plants on Earth to

the fusion occurring within the cores of stars though the majority of our Sun's activity owes to the strong force the weaker force is still tasked with initiating the critical first few steps of the proton proton Chain Reaction powering the fusion of sunlike stars and for much larger Stars the weak Force plays an even bigger role in the carbon nitrogen oxygen cycle where Decay facilitates the synthesis of heavier and heavier elements then when these stars explode in a great Supernova the rapid Neutron capture process floods the cause of surviving atoms with unprecedented numbers of neutrons by

agency of the weak Force to yield the heaviest Metals in the universe even more enriched than iron speaking of of Supernova one of the weak forces most elusive clients the neutrino also takes center stage during these Stellar explosions when a massive stars outer layers collapse they compress the core until it Ricochet against Neutron degeneracy pressure but this alone is not the cause of the tremendous explosion rather it creates the extreme environment in which neutrino particles step out of the Shadows to start interacting with normal matter as they deposit a small portion of their abundant energy

to supercharge the Stars bouncing layers catalyzing the super luminous explosion which precedes the formation of a black hole or neutron star this demonstrates a clear physical link between the fundamental forces at the highest rates of energy ordinarily neutrinos barely interact with normal matter floating around like ethereal ghost particles in the background of space but at excessively high temperature energies like those found in a supernova these particles do begin interacting with ordinary matter implying a physical Link in their nature somewhere much higher up the chain under the most extreme energized conditions the conditions of the early

Universe following the end of the Quark epoch about 1 second into the universe's life following the partitioning of the electro weak Force newly formed pairs of hadrons and antih hadrons latched onto one another and annihilated themselves allowing the newly established weak Force to convert their byproducts into a second type of primordial elementary particle leptons a class featuring electrons muons Toons and nutrition none of which exhibit strong interactions ordinarily but during the lepton Epoch the temperature of the young universe would have been so high that both types of nuclear interactions would have affected these newly formed

particles but as another second of cosmic time ticked by the temperature of space dropped further to below a billion Kelvin the point at which neutrinos were able to decouple their behavior from ordinary matter and sink into the background of space as the ghostly Essence we know them as today such a decoupling event would have no doubt etched an irrevocable imprint of its final interactions with matter into the fabric of space itself analogous to the cosmic microwave background which is currently our earliest snapshot of the young universe but the CNB was formed when it was almost

400,000 years old just imagine the mindbending secrets we could unearth if we could capture this Cosmic nutrino background emitted just two seconds into the universe's life such a profound snapshot would completely revolutionize our picture of the primordial Cosmos unfortunately however even at the best of times neutrinos propagate with a very low rate of detectable energy and experiments are vast complex and expensive to construct but for the universe's oldest coldest and lowest energy neutrinos it's a different story entirely far beyond the Realms of feasibility in any of our lifetimes at least as such this tantalizing map

of the infant Cosmos and The Smoking Gun that would Orit verify everything we've discussed so far will likely remain hidden forever teasing Humanity from the shadows for now our earliest view of space is the aforementioned Cosmic microwave background the oldest detectable signature of electromagnetic radiation which was emitted when the universe went dark the final fundamental interaction and the last to establish itself is the electromagnetic force whose agents began dominating the universe's Behavior at the end of the lepton Epoch about 10 seconds into its life though not quite as powerful as strong interactions electromagnetism still Wis

considerable power responsible for a broad range of energetic processes as a result including the emission of visible light that we can see it works by instelling particles with an electric charge either positive like a proton or negative like an electron this charge property then elicits interactions with the electromagnetic force as a region of influence is created around the particle known as an electrostatic field which facilitates interactions as opposite charges attract one another while like charges repel the movement of these charged particles then gives rise to a magnetic field as a distinct yet closely related phenomenon

electrostatic interactions are the final layer of glue holding together the structure structures of atoms beyond the nucleus where the strong force has no bearing these currents keep charged electrons in orbit as the final piece of the atomic puzzle they also enable The Binding of much larger macromolecular aggregations like proteins which are of course an essential component of Life on this world moreover the force plays a part in just about every technological process unfolding on Earth not just in generating transforming and distributing electricity but also for internet services radio transmissions and most kinds of navigation all

of which are delivered through the carriers of the electromagnetic force the photon photons are among the most profound type of force carrying Bosa because unlike the nuclear mediators they are not confined to short subatomic ranges by their Mass on the contrary photons are said to be massless with no tangible weight or quantity to hold them back or limit their interaction instead photons zip around the Cosmos on all scales at the fastest speed attainable 299,792,458 m/ second aka the speed of light but it is not just the speed of light it is the speed limit as

the propagation speed of both gravity and electromagnetism it is the processing speed of space itself a hard limit which can never be breached anything that has mass can never reach this ceiling to accelerate to such a speed and maintain it would require an infinite amount of energy alas photons are said to be massless because they're the opposite they have no quantity capable of holding them back and so shoot around space indefinitely until they are absorbed never slowing down in the meantime by themselves these massless photons don't do very much and are invariably part of a

much more significant aggregation of light particles known as an electromagnetic wave and taken together it is the frequency of these waves and intensity of their constituent photons that determines the type of radiation according to the electromagnetic spectrum making up the pallet painting the cosmos from low energy radiostatic to cancer causing gamma radiation with the visible lights that we can see strung somewhere in between at the far end of this spectrum where waves of photons are at their lowest frequencies and thus longest wavelengths we find the radio Spectra these are aggregations of photons so infrequent they

cannot be seen as such and must instead be listened for this makes them a useful virtually harmless tool for transmitting encoded information which gives radio signals a critical role in our everyday lives Humanity has been tuning into radio broadcasts for well over a century while many parts of the world still use it to distribute television signals furthermore radio photons are much less prone to atmospheric absorption and poor weather conditions making them the medium of choice for satellite Communications the GPA navigation system which is essential for most Maritime Aviation and even domestic Endeavors relies on radio

signals passing between space and the ground not to mention all the other invaluable services that satellites deliver and of course there's the field of radio astronomy which emerged in the 1960s and has unveiled seismic Revelations about our Cosmos ever since from the nature of neutrons stars to the noise left over from The Big Bang itself the aforementioned Cosmic microwave background this static signature of space can be found at the slightly higher frequency shorter microwave bands of the radio spectrum microwaves play a similar role in many Communications and satellite Technologies but their slightly higher tendency to

be absorbed also makes them effective weather mapping agents microwaves are also used in medicine from radar-based cancer detection to the coagulation of the cancer cells themselves they even have a number of domestic uses perhaps the most well-known is in the kitchen where many microwave convection ovens heat and defrost food by vibrating molecules of water from inside as wave frequency increases and wav lengths continue to shorten we soon reach the boundary of the radio spectrum where we then cross into Optical wavelengths featuring radiation that we can see our first stop is in the infrared bands an

in demand range of frequencies right now as the James web telescope searches the skies infrared radiation allows us the opportunity to study some of the very deep deepest darkest corners of space so distant that their visible lights has faded from View and been shifted into the infrared bands by the gradual expansion of space therefore infrared frequencies provide us the perfect channels for bringing the most Ultra distant ancient galaxies into view from the periphery of the cosmic Horizon enabling web to snap Ultra detailed highresolution images of the most remote reaches of space closer to home and

the brunt of luminous emissions return to visible wavelength The Next Step Up on the optical Spectrum featuring all the frequencies that can be seen with the human eye visible wavelengths are themselves a mini spectrum of seven distinct colors from Red through to Violet with all the possible color combinations intersecting in between from the light of the Sun and the Moon to the bulbs illuminating your home and even the screen you are watching this video on visible light dictates how we interface with the world around us to give the electromagnetic force arguably the greatest influence over

our everyday lives lighting our streets and motorways and powering our homes and buildings its role in electricity is essential to the continuation of Life As We know it second only to the sunlight sustaining the Earth's natural cycles speaking of sunlight if we continue to compress waves of visible light and increase their Photon frequency we eventually exit via the Violet end of the visible spectrum and cross into the aply named ultraviolet bands UV is the strongest type of optical radiation and the most pervasive form found in sunlight like other types it comes in a handful of

frequencies each with their own undesirable effects on the human body UVA is known to penetrate skin and degrade DNA cells potentially accelerating the development of various forms of cancer UVB meanwhile is the pesky culprit responsible for sunburn the strongest shortest wavelength type UVC poses the greatest risk to life on Earth but the vast majority emitted by the sun is absorbed by the planet's protective ozone layer a shell of molecular gas which is constantly forming and being destroyed under the glare of the sun's emissions as such variances in this layer's thickness often follow patterns in in

seasonality latitude and solar activity with depletions always temporary to be preceded by a period of recovery however it became apparent in the 1970s that Humanity's actions were damaging and degrading this protective shield well beyond any natural explanation as a huge seasonal lapse in Ozone molecules took shape over Antarctica the culprit was quick identified as compounds today known as ozone depleting substances which include cfc's hcfcs carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform emitted by both industrial and household appliances these compounds then spend between 2 to 5 years Rising into the atmosphere where they are broken down by the

sun's Radiance to yield chlorine and bromine atoms two natural killers of stratospheric ozone a single atom of chlorine alone can destroy up to 100,000 molecules of ozone before it exits the atmosphere prompting numerous countries to restrict the uses of cfc's to prevent further depletion and from the 1990s heading into the New Millennium Trends in Ozone depletion did indeed begin to stabilize including around the seasonal Antarctic hole but this whole has never gone away and did not heal itself contrary to popular belief ozone depletion continues to be a major worry for Humanity to this day not

least because these harmful compounds are still being used around the world as new applications for them have been discovered it just underlines the importance of modernizing our technology to ensure our future practices do not upset the Earth's delicate Natural Balance staying with the subject of modern technology at wavelengths hundreds of times shorter than UVC we exit the optical bands and stray into the Realms of high energy ionizing radiation strong enough to strip atoms of their electrons resulting in all sorts of problems for us fragile humans our first stop is x-rays also known as ronen radiation

x-rays are a well-known set of frequencies with a unique place in both medicine and culture alike though hazardous in high doses x-ray photons can penetrate softer materials and pass through them though they are still absorbed by harder substances this makes them ideal for making crosssections of the human skeleton to analyze bone breakages among other Dee rooted ailments and their ability to ignore softer materials gives them additional uses in archaeology geology and agriculture for studying rocks soil water and air but given the risks posed to humans by ionizing radiation their usage is tightly regulated in most

parts of the world and for radiation even stronger than x-rays it's a different story entirely gamma rays are the most energized type of electromagnetic radiation orders of magnitude stronger and shorter in wavelength than x-rays their photons so densely concentrated in fact that they can pass through the space between atoms in a mirror and thus cannot be captured or reflected unlike other types gamma rays are only produced by the very hottest most energetic objects in the universe on Earth by lightning within nuclear reactors and during nuclear detonations in space meanwhile they are spewed out in enormous

quantities by Supernova neutron stars and black holes the gamma ray sky ablazed with the most luminous phenomena in space if we could see gamma rays the way we see visible light our night sky would constantly pulse and Flash with luminous Mounds most of which would stream from Galaxy clusters billions of light sheers in the backdrop in the distant younger Universe gamma radiation gushes from quazars among other types of active galaxies whose Central black holes host accretion discs that burn so brightly they drown out their entire host galaxies from our point of view as the brightest

objects in the Universe gamma rays are also emitted by the largest electromagnetic explosions in the cosmos Gamay bursts which occur during Supernova as well as in colliding neutron stars and super massive black holes they release in just 10 seconds more energy than our sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifespan capable of blasting our planet and blitzing all life on Earth Earth if one occurred in our Cosmic backyard gamma rays are also emitted when the crusts of the most powerful neutron stars magnetar crack and rupture to displace energy these so-called star Quakes have been

known to churn out enough gamma radiation to leave a noticeable mark on our planet's ionosphere from more than 40,000 lies distant once again such an event occurring closer to the solar system would surely spell the end of days for Humanity thankfully the nearest potential gamma ray sources to Earth are all hundreds if not thousands of light years away nowhere near close enough to pose any real danger but it is nonetheless a chilling reminder of the power wielded by the electromagnetic force and the four forces in general together they each exert an influence on varying aspects

of our reality dictating our existence and determining the laws of physics perhaps one day someone will find the graviton particle and will describe its behavior in terms of the standard model to create a championing Theory of Everything capable of shedding light on the one true Essence that rules our Cosmos until then however we are constrained by the limits of the standard model though it has gotten us this far the framework still has many imperfections which remain unaccounted for and only by answering these questions in the context of gravity will we ever be able to get

a better understanding of the forces of nature than this and with that I bid you good night see signing out [Music] [Music] [Music]