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Throwback Thursday: The greatest unsolved problem in theoretical physics (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]
“Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence — love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.” -Max Planck
When it comes to our Universe, you might think we understand it pretty well. We have a full list of particles we know to exist, we understand the forces that describe their behavior, and we’ve been able to detect and measure each and every interaction between them.
Image credit: NSF, DOE, LBNL, and the Contemporary Physics Education Project (CPEP).
But not everything is known. Perhaps the most disturbing puzzle out there is why the force of gravity — the most easily observable force in the Universe and the first to be understood at all — is so much mind-bogglingly weaker in magnitude than all the others. If you took two protons, for example, and held them a meter apart, the electromagnetic repulsion between them would be 10^40 times stronger than their gravitational attraction! Why is this? We don’t know, and that’s known as the hierarchy problem.
Image credit: Universe-review.ca.
It’s the greatest unsolved problem in theoretical physics today; come explore the potential solutions!
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2015/03/05/throwback-thursday-the-greatest-unsolved-problem-in-theoretical-physics-synopsis/
