Beyond the Standard Model
Summary
- The unification of physical law is an ongoing theme in physics.
- Historical unification
- Newton's theory of universal gravitation unified the…
- terrestrial gravitation described by Galileo in his laws of falling bodies and projectiles and…
- celestial gravitation described by Kepler in his three laws of planetary motion.
- Maxwell's equations of electricity and magnetism (E&M) or electromagnetism unified the theories of…
- electricity as described by Franklin, Coulomb, et al. with…
- magnetism as described by Gilbert, Michell, et al. and then subsumed…
- optics as described by Hooke, Huygens, Newton, Young, et al.
- In the early 20th century…
- gravitation was expanded into the theory of general relativity (GR) by Einstein;
- electromagnetism was expanded into the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) by Feynman, Schwinger, Tomanaga, and Dyson; and
- the strong force was described in the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) of Gell-Mann and Zweig; but
- the weak force was not described by an independent theory of what is sometimes informally called quantum flavordynamics (QFD).
- The electroweak theory (EWT) of Glashow, Weinberg, and Salaam extended…
- quantum electrodynamics, which had been described, to include…
- quantum flavordynamics, which had not yet been described.
- The standard model of particle physics…
- is the combination of…
- electroweak theory (EWT) and
- quantum chromodynamics (QCD)
- is not a theory unto itself
- Conjectural unification
- By extension, there should probably be a grand unified theory (GUT) that would unite…
- electroweak theory with…
- quantum chromodynamics.
- By extension, there should also be a theory of everything (TOE) that would unite the four fundamental forces of nature…
- gravity
- the strong force
- the weak force
- electromagnetism
- Some candidates for a theory of everything include…
- string theory, M theory, brane world, etc.
- supersymmetry
- Science is reductionist in nature.
- Complex entities are built from elementary constituents.
- Everything is essentially "atomic".
- The laws describing the behavior of elementary constituents are few in number.
- All additional "laws" can be derived from these few laws in principle.