Our conventional physics teaches us that there are four fundamental forces at work in the universe
the strong force the weak force the electromagnetic force and the gravitational
force they work over different ranges and have different strengths and are the reason behind
most of the universe's function as we know it from playing basketball to launching a rocket into
space to sticking a magnet on your refrigerator all the forces that all of us experience every day
can be whittled down to this critical quartet yet there are a lot of explanations missing we still
have no idea what dark energy is and how it's expanding the universe or what exactly dark matter
is made of among many other mysteries of deep space that our knowledge of physics is perhaps
too limited to understand welcome to Factnomenal and today let's look at the discovery of the
fifth force of nature that we're quite sure exists but don't comprehend entirely yet
in one of our recent videos about data collected by the Hubble telescope we talked about how
there's something missing out there a source of energy or perhaps a force that's messing with
the Hubble constant the rate at which the universe expands however there's a problem
when we try to understand this phenomenon we don't possess the right knowledge to analyze this power
our physics is incomplete we may have to change a lot of things about what we know as universal
physics to understand what we don't yet know and that can be scary for a lot of people a new study
that's grounded in the research of dark matter is proposing something similar and that can be both
daunting and equally fascinating the researchers from the university of nottingham found that their
new study could lead toward a first potential new physics explanation that's still based on
dark matter in contrast to previous studies this recent study suggests that hypothetical particles
called symmetrons are generating invisible walls in space that hold galaxies in their orbits but
what the heck are symmetrons in the first place for years scientists have been trying
to understand dark matter and dark energy from the perspective of our current inventory of particles
and forces in nature but they simply aren't able to explain major cosmological phenomena
such as why the universe is expanding at an ever faster rate or what holds galaxy's shapes together
interestingly both of these phenomena are somewhat related one of the candidates for explanation
is the so-called "symmetron field," which is said to pervade space much like the Higgs field the
Higgs field is a theoretical field of energy that exists in every region of the universe the field
is accompanied by a fundamental particle known as the Higgs boson aka the god particle which is used
by the field to continuously interact with other particles such as the electron while the Higgs
boson provides mass to every particle that enters its field symmetrons are supposed to provide shape
to everything that interacts with it such as galaxies however it's too early to call for that
as researchers believe that there's still a 50 50 chance that they could be wrong however it is a
step towards understanding that mysterious isle of astrophysics that we don't understand whatsoever
in order to prove that there are indeed invisible walls in space the burden that symmetrons exist
must be fulfilled first space instruments like the James Webb telescope and others could be
beneficial in this possible endeavor as they study how the universe was formed in its early stages
and to tackle this challenge we must come up with a solution for the satellite disk problem
the lambda cold dark matter model is currently considered the standard model for understanding
the positions of galaxies around each other but it has its issues the lambda model presupposes that
small galaxies should be scattered in messy orbits around larger galaxies but the majority of the
small galaxies orbiting their large counterparts are arrayed in thin flat plains interestingly
these disks or planes are strikingly similar to the rings of Saturn which kind of makes it look
like there's an invisible wall in space that sets these galaxies into an arranged order astronomers
often refer to these walls as satellites which can be located in synced up orbits all over our galaxy
and they've observed them in neighboring galaxies as well over the past few years experts have
proposed several explanations that could solve the satellite disk problem however as with the
Higgs particle whose mass wasn't known until the existence of the particle was confirmed
the physical properties of symmetrons cannot be accurately predicted unlike the Higgs boson
whose existence was proved by experiments performed here on earth symmetrons are a
little bit trickier in that regard nobody can say what the mass of a symmetron is nor how strongly
they interact with normal matter and that's what makes them a kind of schrodinger's cat
it's hard to prove if they exist or not and there's no way to open the box so what can we do
maybe understanding the other four forces may hold a clue
in no particular order as we mentioned earlier the four forces of nature that govern the observable
universe are gravity electromagnetism the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force
gravity is obviously the easiest to understand and explain ask newton he got hit on the head
by an apple and that actually helped okay maybe that story isn't entirely true but we do know that
an apple was involved gravity is the force that causes any two things that have mass such as atoms
people planets stars etc to draw towards each other the bigger the mass the stronger the pole
easy peasy but that doesn't exactly work in my case though i'm quite buff and it doesn't seem to
magically draw women to me anyway on to the next one the next one is also not that tough to explain
to be honest it's quite self-explanatory by its name electromagnetism that's just electricity and
magnetism mixed together well actually there's a bit more to it than that the electromagnetic force
explains how things that are electrically charged positively or negatively interact with each
other one of the major understandings is that a magnetic charge can create an electric charge and
vice versa those interactions are responsible for electric power generation which is kind of a big
deal electromagnetism and how it pushes and pulls objects is responsible for the energy in things
like batteries and magnets but it also includes light which is just waves of electromagnetic
radiation the last two the strong and weak forces are theoretically stronger than gravity but they
work at the micro level only that is at very short distances that means in the tiny spaces between
atoms and the even smaller spaces where quantum physics starts making everything really weird
that's why they're called the strong and weak nuclear forces in fact the strong nuclear force
is the strongest of the four known forces and is basically the glue that binds everything together
it's responsible for keeping protons and neutrons stable and then allows them to join and become
atomic nuclei the weak force the opposite of the strong force on the other hand is responsible for
radioactive decay it's what controls how things on a nuclear level fall apart and also before
we forget to mention it the weak nuclear force is also responsible for fusion and keeps our lovely
sun all bright and warm-like not really that weak in its function is it however while we did
explain what these four forces are or do we didn't talk about what makes them tick why they act the
way they do and what's the reason behind their existence does one body with mass just magically
start moving towards another massive thing nope if that was the case i wouldn't be having such
a hard time finding a date but in all seriousness it's made possible by things called force carrier
particles force carriers are the particles that carry information between things and tell them how
to behave think of force carriers as little pocket constitutions for each of the four fundamental
forces they lay out not only all the rules for how to behave but also force the forces to act
by those rules you can call them one force to force them all or the forcest force to ever force
the force carriers for gravity are hypothetical things called gravitons
for electromagnetism they're photons for the weak nuclear force the carriers are called w
and z particles and for the strong nuclear force gluons these force carriers are all classified as
kinds of bosons and now we're close to the possibility of throwing symmetrons into the
mix as well if the hypothesis proffered by the team from the university of nottingham bears fruit
if symmetrons exist that means a force that's carried by them must exist as well in 2015
a group of physicists at the Hungarian academy of sciences saw what the University of California at
Irvine physics department called puzzling anomalies in their experimental data the
Hungarians weren't sure what the anomalies were but they pointed to the existence of a new kind of
light particle however that's where the lead stopped as the Hungarians were unable to calculate
if this particle had a mass or not as is the case with photons later a professor of physics at the
University of California at Irvine won Jonathan Fang christened this particle the "X Boson" at
least for the time being it's believed that the force carried by the x boson is very similar
to electromagnetism however while the normal electric force acts on electrons and protons
this newfound boson interacts only with electrons and neutrons and at an extremely limited range
frustratingly that's all we know about the x boson as the candidate for the carrier particle of this
particular brand of the speculated fifth force on the other hand a new study from the University of
Nottingham presents a fresher explanation of symmetrons that constitute the build up
of space walls between and around galaxies this could possibly solve this long-standing
mystery once and for all however further details regarding this study have yet to be made public
so we'll have to wait a little longer for the really juicy bits but for now the future's
looking brighter who knows how this knowledge may revolutionize our understanding of the universe
and what we would be able to achieve with it tell us in the comments do you think could there be a
sixth a seventh or even possibly more forces of nature that are yet to be discovered and
as always thanks for watching Factnomenal don't forget to like share and subscribe