Can there be more than Four Fundamental Forces?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the possibility of there being more than four fundamental forces in nature, exploring historical perspectives, theoretical frameworks, and the implications of such discoveries. It encompasses theoretical considerations, historical context, and speculative reasoning.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that the current understanding of four fundamental forces may not be definitive, questioning the certainty of this classification.
  • One participant mentions that the term "force" is often used for layman understanding, while physicists may refer to these as interactions or gauges, indicating a potential for more complex underlying structures.
  • Historical context is provided, noting that forces have been unified and separated over time, with the possibility of unifying gravity with other forces through theories involving extra dimensions.
  • Another viewpoint raises concerns about the limitations of current theories, such as anti-gravity and randomness theories, suggesting that these may lead to uncertainty in understanding fundamental forces.
  • It is proposed that if additional forces exist, they would likely operate at scales smaller than currently accessible by experimental methods, implying that their discovery would be challenging.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on the certainty of the four fundamental forces, with some suggesting the possibility of more forces and others emphasizing the challenges in discovering them. The discussion remains unresolved with multiple competing perspectives.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the dependence on current experimental capabilities and the historical evolution of the concept of forces, which may affect interpretations of what constitutes a fundamental force.

T.O.E Dream
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We used to think gravity and electromagnetism were the two fundamental forces of nature until we discovered the strong and weak nuclear forces. Can we be wrong again and discover more forces. If not, then how are we so sure?
 
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I don't know any physicist (especially cosmologist) who believes that 4 is the magic number of forces (although we usually call them interactions, or even more abstractly gauges - the term "force" is more to make contact with the laymen who have had a semester or two of physics). For example, SU(5) would be a single "force", but would manifest as, not only 3 of the 4 forces, but also leave many residuals.

You may be interested in a bit of history here, though. Perhaps the first recognized force was magnetism, thousands of years ago. Then, electrostatics and gravity (probably first electrostatics) were recognized, also in acient times. Interestingly, electricity and magnetism were once unified, but later separated by the wisdom of the scholars. Finally, electricity and magnetism were reunited in the nineteenth century. Then, there was the idea to unify gravity with electromagnetism using extra dimensions. That idea was put on hold, but recently it seems that extra dimensions (UED and/or SUSY) may be a viable candidate. Extra-dimensional theories are an example of theories that suggest phenomena that you could interpret as new kinds of "forces".

Interestingly, gravity remains to be the major obstacle to unification.
 
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i think unable to find the inverse of the theories that we have made from the nature ,i.e. anti gravity theories, randomness theories make us to lead no where and finally we'll come to uncertainty theory and the things will be totally left out for experimental data!:confused:
 
T.O.E Dream said:
We used to think gravity and electromagnetism were the two fundamental forces of nature until we discovered the strong and weak nuclear forces. Can we be wrong again and discover more forces. If not, then how are we so sure?
Sure, there's no reason there couldn't be more forces. But they would probably have to act on scales much smaller than anything we can experimentally test now (otherwise they would have been discovered already).
 

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