Is There a 5th Force in String Theory and What Does it Mean for Space?

[waht]

I read in Elegant Universe there is a 5th force predicted by the string theory. Anybody know what it is ?

 

[Sempiternity]

The "5th force" proposed in the Elegant Universe is the Higgs field, which is thought to permeate space. The Higgs boson is the carrier particle of the Higgs field. This hypothesis says that the Higgs field is what gives particles their mass through the Higgs mechanism.

The Higgs particle is as yet a hypothetical particle invoked to explain why the carriers of the electroweak force (the W and Z bosons) have mass. Quantum electrodynamics requires the photon to have zero mass (which is good because indeed it does), but early attempts to develop and electroweak theory also required the bosons to be massless, (which is bad because then they would be as abundant as the photon in the universe, which indeed they are not). Peter Higgs and two Belgian researchers (who worked independently of Higgs) come across the same idea for settling the puzzle in 1964. If there is an otherwise undetectable field filling the universe (now called the Higgs field), it could have associated with it a previously unknown kind of boson, the Higgs particle, which has mass. This would allow any photon-like particle to become massive by swallowing up a Higgs boson. It is possible, but not proven, that all-massive particles get their mass this way.

As of now, the Higgs boson has yet to be proven to exist. Scientists say that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which opens in 2007, will be able to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs particle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_field
http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs1.html
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae304.cfm

 

[<<<GUILLE>>>]

The "5th force" proposed in the Elegant Universe is the Higgs field, which is thought to permeate space. The Higgs boson is the carrier particle of the Higgs field.

What do you mean by permeate space?

 

[DaveC426913]

What do you mean by permeate space?

It means the Higgs field is literally everywhere (including the places where there's no matter or energy).