Particles of Life - Part 3

So far, we have seen particles involved with 2 parts of our universe; those of matter and those of energy. The last types of particles we will talk about are those of the fundamental forces in our world. To do this we need to know what the fundamental forces are. There are 4 of them in total: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.

First, we have already looked at a form of electromagnetism, coming from photons. Photons are the disruption in an electromagnetic field. The force of electromagnetism is transferred through these electromagnetic fields, so when there is a disturbance in this field which results in a force and an energy change, which is why a photon is released.

The strong nuclear force is the force which holds the quarks together so they can form neutrons and protons in the centre of an atom. This force is transferred by a particle known as a gluon, which does exactly like it sounds like it would. It basically glues the quarks together through the strong force. The Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Switzerland, is the  largest particle accelerator in the world to date. Part of what the LHC has done is observe quark gluon plasma, which is basically this interaction between quarks with the strong force.

The weak nuclear force is able to change the flavour of quarks and other particles spins through the emission of bosons. This may not seem like something that comes up very often, but it is a cool process. The particles are called W and Z bosons and what happens is when a particle, such as a quark, starts undergoing a weak decay, one of these bosons is released and through this emission the quarks properties can change. For example an up quark can be made when a down quark releases a W boson, which is then converted into other particles which we will discuss at another time.

Finally, we all know about gravity. Its what keeps us on the ground. This is typically referred to as a field force, which means it doesnt act by contact by at a distance. What most people would think of gravity as is the attraction between 2 objects. It is a very weak force compared to the other 3 which is why we only notice it when a mass is very large. The field also can only transmit the force at the speed of light. There is a particle which has been theorized, as is currently being looked for, called the graviton which would transfer the gravitational force. Its properties would be similar to the photon, such as it would have no mass. The way they are looking for this particle is by observing something called gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime caused by rapid motion of heavy masses, such as black holes. If gravitational waves are observed it would show that gravity is restricted by the speed of light and that gravitons are a major possibility.

In the last 3 posts i have talked about some particles of various types, but these were very limited descriptions, and even limited number of particles. There are many types of particles in our universe which are very intriguing and I hope to talk about more in the future.