[HN Gopher] Is there a fifth fundamental force of nature?
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       Is there a fifth fundamental force of nature?
        
       Author : Brajeshwar
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2023-08-24 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
        
       | meindnoch wrote:
       | Yes. The force of love!
        
         | olddustytrail wrote:
         | That's not a force. It's a multiple of the distance.
         | 
         | Which is why absence makes the heart grow fonder.
        
           | finite_depth wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | smegger001 wrote:
           | Arguably love is a attractive force, but if it scales with
           | distance than we could potentially counter cosmic expansion
           | by separating couples and sending them in rockets flying in
           | opposed directions
        
             | doodlebugging wrote:
             | I don't think this will work if either member travels with
             | someone else who is not the other part of their couple. The
             | default for as long as I can remember is pretty simple, if
             | you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're
             | with. Therefore, love's attractive force would fluctuate
             | too much to ever counter anything cosmically.
        
             | doctor_eval wrote:
             | Is that love? Or just entanglement?
        
         | hawk_ wrote:
         | That's not a fundamental force and the insinuation made me
         | dislike the otherwise nice movie, Interstellar.
        
           | dr_dshiv wrote:
           | Alternatively, Love is the Fifth Element, according to Bruce
           | Willis.
        
         | Eupraxias wrote:
         | Close - how about compassion?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tracker1 wrote:
       | Insert Mister Mxyzptlk reference...
        
       | jjtheblunt wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | the__alchemist wrote:
         | I felt a strange loss; to know that maybe this time, we really
         | have learned the core of physics; a claim made many times in
         | the past, and always proven wrong. BLOH is so reliable, it
         | makes me legitimately worried there may not be another force.
         | 
         | Perhaps only the weak form here applies; the answer isn't "no",
         | but the headline provides no information on the topic? The
         | strong form is, regrettably, the common one.
        
           | bemusedthrow75 wrote:
           | > Perhaps only the weak form here applies
           | 
           | Oh you're just appeasing the God of The Gaps ;-)
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
        
           | jjtheblunt wrote:
           | Shout out to the sibling comment: maybe BLOH IS the fifth
           | force, ironically.
        
         | bemusedthrow75 wrote:
         | Betteridge's Law of Headlines does sometimes feel like a
         | fundamental force of nature.
        
       | xenadu02 wrote:
       | Answer: No.
       | 
       | If another field exists its effects are so vanishingly minuscule
       | and force carriers so rare we can ignore it because there are no
       | observational consequences.
       | 
       | Remember we discovered an extremely weak field that has no
       | obvious observational consequences (the weak force and the Z/W
       | bosons) because there were gaps in the then standard model that
       | begged for an explanation.
       | 
       | Besides the obvious gravity problem the standard model doesn't
       | have many gaps left into which one can squeeze a new force and
       | its field/carrier particles.
        
       | archgoon wrote:
       | So there are 5 observed bosons, and one postulated graviton.
       | 
       | The strong force is associaed with the gluon.
       | 
       | The Electromagnetism gets the photon.
       | 
       | The Weak force gets the Z and W+/- bosons.
       | 
       | Gravity gets the graviton, but that's mostly a placeholder since
       | we don't know how to properly model gravitational effects with
       | QFT.
       | 
       | Higgs doesn't get associated with a force (yet).
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | It's not that hard to model gravity with a QFT, there are so
         | many ways to do quantum gravity now. The problem is deciding
         | which one is right and the answer to that might involve looking
         | inside a black hole or at energy scales of 10^19 GeV, length
         | scales of 10^-35m, etc.
        
           | lanza wrote:
           | In the classical sense of "a QFT" then no there are no ways
           | to do QG. The computations diverge. In the extended sense
           | where you let yourself include non-QFT-like things like
           | strings and spin foams, then sure.
        
             | sojuz151 wrote:
             | But the fact that the computation diverges is not a problem
             | by itself. All QFT diverge but this can be fixed by
             | renormalisation. Problem is that for gravity this would
             | require infinity many parameters and the theory could match
             | any observation
        
         | pa7x1 wrote:
         | There are 8 gluons, in fact.
         | 
         | There is not very good reason why the Higgs interaction is not
         | called a force. I wouldn't read too much into it, tradition
         | carries a lot of weight in how people call things.
         | 
         | We could even measure the attractive force it generates:
         | jhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1601.05087
        
       | labster wrote:
       | The Law of Fives is never wrong!
       | 
       | Incidentally Eris is the one who ordered the Muon.
        
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