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The Four Fundamental Forces of Nature

By Jeremy Rehm October 01, 2019

Reference Article: Facts about the four fundamental forces that describe every
interaction in nature.

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The four fundamental forces of nature are at the root of every interaction in the universe.
(Image: © NASA/Shutterstock)

From walking on the street, to launching a rocket into space, to sticking a magnet on your
refrigerator, physical forces are acting all around us. But all the forces that we experience
every day (and many that we don't realize we experience every day) can be whittled down to
just four fundamental forces:

1. Gravity. 
2. The weak force. 
3. Electromagnetism. 
4. The strong force. 

These are called the four fundamental forces of nature, and they govern everything that
happens in the universe.

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Gravity
Gravity is the attraction between two objects that have mass or energy, whether this is seen in
dropping a rock from a bridge, a planet orbiting a star or the moon causing ocean tides.
Gravity is probably the most intuitive and familiar of the fundamental forces, but it's also been
one of the most challenging to explain.

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Isaac Newton was the rst to propose the idea of gravity, supposedly inspired by an apple
falling from a tree. He described gravity as a literal attraction between two objects. Centuries
later, Albert Einstein suggested, through his theory of general relativity, that gravity is not an
attraction or a force. Instead, it's a consequence of objects bending space-time. A large object
works on space-time a bit like how a large ball placed in the middle of a sheet a ects that
material, deforming it and causing other, smaller objects on the sheet to fall toward the
middle. 

Though gravity holds planets, stars, solar systems and even galaxies together, it turns out to
be the weakest of the fundamental forces, especially at the molecular and atomic scales.
Think of it this way: How hard is it to lift a ball o the ground? Or to lift your foot? Or to jump?
All of those actions are counteracting the gravity of the entire Earth. And at the molecular and
atomic levels, gravity has almost no e ect relative to the other fundamental forces.

Related: 6 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space

The weak force

The weak force, also called the weak nuclear interaction, is responsible for particle decay. This
is the literal change of one type of subatomic particle into another. So, for example, a neutrino

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that strays close to a neutron can turn the neutron into a proton while the neutrino becomes
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Physicists describe this interaction through the exchange of force-carrying particles called
bosons. Speci c kinds of bosons are responsible for the weak force, electromagnetic force
and strong force. In the weak force, the bosons are charged particles called W and Z bosons.
When subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons come within 10^-18
meters, or 0.1% of the diameter of a proton, of one another, they can exchange these bosons.
As a result, the subatomic particles decay into new particles, according to Georgia State
University's HyperPhysics website. 

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The weak force is critical for the nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and produce the
energy needed for most life forms here on Earth. It's also why archaeologists can use carbon-
14 to date ancient bone, wood and other formerly living artifacts. Carbon-14 has six protons
and eight neutrons; one of those neutrons decays into a proton to make nitrogen-14, which
has seven protons and seven neutrons. This decay happens at a predictable rate, allowing
scientists to determine how old such artifacts are.

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The weak force is critical for the nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and produce the energy needed for most life forms here on
Earth. Here's a closeup of the M7.6-class solar are that erupted from the sun on July 23, 2016 as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics
Observatory.  (Image credit: NASA)

Electromagnetic force
The electromagnetic force, also called the Lorentz force, acts between charged particles, like
negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. Opposite charges attract one
another, while like charges repel. The greater the charge, the greater the force. And much like
gravity, this force can be felt from an in nite distance (albeit the force would be very, very
small at that distance).

As its name indicates, the electromagnetic force consists of two parts: the electric force and
the magnetic force. At rst, physicists described these forces as separate from one another,
but researchers later realized that the two are components of the same force. 

The electric component acts between charged particles whether they're moving or stationary,
creating a eld by which the charges can in uence each other. But once set into motion, those
charged particles begin to display the second component, the magnetic force. The particles
create a magnetic eld around them as they move. So when electrons zoom through a wire to
charge your computer or phone or turn on your TV, for example, the wire becomes magnetic.

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Related: How the Sun's Magnetic Field Works (Infographic)

Electromagnetic forces are transferred between charged particles through the exchange of
massless, force-carrying bosons called photons, which are also the particle components of
light.  The force-carrying photons that swap between charged particles, however, are a
di erent manifestation of photons. They are virtual and undetectable, even though they are
technically the same particles as the real and detectable version, according to the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville.

The electromagnetic force is responsible for some of the most commonly experienced
phenomena: friction, elasticity, the normal force and the force holding solids together in a
given shape. It's even responsible for the drag that birds, planes and even Superman
experience while ying. These actions can occur because of charged (or neutralized) particles
interacting with one another. The normal force that keeps a book on top of a table (instead of
gravity pulling the book through to the ground), for example, is a consequence of electrons in
the table's atoms repelling electrons in the book's atoms. 

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The force that keeps a book on top of a table (instead of gravity pulling the book through to the ground), is a consequence of the
electromagnetic force: Electrons in the table's atoms repel electrons in the book's atoms. (Image credit: NASA/Shutterstock)

The strong nuclear force

The strong nuclear force, also called the strong nuclear interaction, is the strongest of the four
fundamental forces of nature. It's 6 thousand trillion trillion trillion (that’s 39 zeroes after 6!)
times stronger than the force of gravity, according to the HyperPhysics website. And that's
because it binds the fundamental particles of matter together to form larger particles. It holds
together the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, and part of the strong force also
keeps the protons and neutrons of an atom's nucleus together.

Much like the weak force, the strong force operates only when subatomic particles are
extremely close to one another. They have to be somewhere within 10^-15 meters from each
other, or roughly within the diameter of a proton, according to the HyperPhysics website. 

The strong force is odd, though, because unlike any of the other fundamental forces, it gets
weaker as subatomic particles move closer together. It actually reaches maximum strength
when the particles are farthest away from each other, according to Fermilab. Once within
range, massless charged bosons called gluons transmit the strong force between quarks and
keep them "glued" together. A tiny fraction of the strong force called the residual strong force
acts between protons and neutrons. Protons in the nucleus repel one another because of
their similar charge, but the residual strong force can overcome this repulsion, so the particles
stay bound in an atom's nucleus.

Related: Nuclear Generators Power NASA Deep Space Probes (Infographic)

Unifying nature
The outstanding question of the four fundamental forces is whether they're actually
manifestations of just a single great force of the universe. If so, each of them should be able
to merge with the others, and there's already evidence that they can. 

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Physicists Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg from Harvard University with Abdus Salam
from Imperial College London won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for unifying the
electromagnetic force with the weak force to form the concept of the electroweak force.
Physicists working to nd a so-called grand uni ed theory aim to unite the electroweak force
with the strong force to de ne an electronuclear force, which models have predicted but
researchers have not yet observed. The nal piece of the puzzle would then require unifying
gravity with the electronuclear force to develop the so-called theory of everything, a
theoretical framework that could explain the entire universe.

Physicists, however, have found it pretty di cult to merge the microscopic world with the
macroscopic one. At large and especially astronomical scales, gravity dominates and is best
described by Einstein's theory of general relativity. But at molecular, atomic or subatomic
scales, quantum mechanics best describes the natural world. And so far, no one has come up
with a good way to merge those two worlds. 

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Many physicists aim to unite the fundamental forces under a single, uni ed theory — a theoretical framework that could explain the
entire universe. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Physicists studying quantum gravity aim to describe the force in terms of the quantum world,
which could help with the merge. Fundamental to that approach would be the discovery of
gravitons, the theoretical force-carrying boson of the gravitational force. Gravity is the only
fundamental force that physicists can currently describe without using force-carrying
particles. But because descriptions of all the other fundamental forces require force-carrying
particles, scientists expect gravitons must exist at the subatomic level — researchers just
haven't found these particles yet.

Further complicating the story is the invisible realm of dark matter and dark energy, which
make up roughly 95% of the universe. It's unclear whether dark matter and energy consist of
a single particle or a whole set of particles that have their own forces and messenger bosons. 

The primary messenger particle of current interest is the theoretical dark photon, which
would mediate interactions between the visible and invisible universe. If dark photons exist,
they'd be the key to detecting the invisible world of dark matter and could lead to the
discovery of a fth fundamental force. So far, though, there's no evidence that dark photons
exist, and some research has o ered strong evidence that these particles don't exist. 

Additional resources:

Watch a video on the fundamental forces of nature, from Khan Academy.

Read more about unifying the fundamental forces, from CERN.
Read more about how the fundamental forces work in the Standard Model, from CERN.

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