The discussion centers on the unification of forces in the early universe, specifically within the first Planck time (10^-43 seconds). It is established that all fundamental forces were unified due to extremely high temperatures and pressures, a concept supported by the Standard Model of particle physics. Current understanding suggests that replicating such conditions in a laboratory setting is virtually impossible, as it would require compressing space-time itself. Additionally, while electric and magnetic forces are unified into electromagnetism, there is no evidence to suggest they could separate into distinct forces again.
PREREQUISITESPhysicists, cosmologists, and students of advanced physics who are interested in the fundamental forces of nature and their unification in the context of the early universe.
No. We reason that, by current understanding, they must have been (for some ideas about physics to hold) ... due to the scale of the Universe at the time. You maybe want to treat it as an assumption to be tested.GhostLoveScore said:I have been reading [where?] that until the universe was one Planck time old (10-43 seconds) all the forces were unified into one. Do we know why would they be unified?
Nobody knows.Could we replicate it in the labs one day?
The unification, in this case, was a mathematical unification ... a realization that what we had been calling two separate forces were, in fact, due to an underlying process looked at from different perspectives. This is to say: it's a correction of an historical misunderstanding: a mistake ... it is not clear how any existing force could separate into some collection of other forces as yet unknown but there is no reason to suspect that electromagnetism, should it split into other forces, would split into electricity and magnetism.Today Electric and Magnetic force are unified into Electromagnetic force. Could they separate one day?
Well, one hint is given by the standard model. Interaction strengths depend on the energy scale of the process. One can show that for a certain energy scale, all three interaction strengths become almost equal. Because the corresponding energy scale is very high, and we suspect that the standard model needs extension for such high energy scales, many physicists suspect that this 'almost' is not a coincidence and becomes an 'exactly' once the standard model has been extended in the right way.GhostLoveScore said:I have been reading that until the universe was one Planck time old (10-43 seconds) all the forces were unified into one. Do we know why would they be unified? Is it very large temperatures and pressures? Could we replicate it in the labs one day? Today Electric and Magnetic force are unified into Electromagnetic force. Could they separate one day?
haushofer said:Well, one hint is given by the standard model. Interaction strengths depend on the energy scale of the process. One can show that for a certain energy scale, all three interaction strengths become almost equal.