Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Melissa

I've always been curious....

Does "Electroweak Breaking" Affect the Macroscopic World?

Yes and no. To understand why will require some deep discussion.

The electroweak force is what you get when the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces get together. There are four fundamental forces (also known as fundamental interactions) in the Universe they are (in descending order of strength) :

Strong nuclear force
Electromagnetism
Weak nuclear force
Gravity

The strong force is what holds the nucleus of an atom together.
The electromagnetic force is the other force we're most familiar with--light, magnetism, radio, microwaves are all manifestations of the same thing--electromagnetism.
The weak nuclear force is responsible for atomic (beta) decay.
Gravity is, well, the warping of space-time by the presence of mass. (Yes,you actually warp space-time a very tiny bit)

At VERY high energies, not seen in over 12 billion years, the electromagnetic and weak forces unify into the electroweak force.

The reason why we don't SEE effects of electroweak breaking is because the universe has cooled down so much that the symmetry has already been broken. If the universe were MUCH hotter (100 GeV--Giga electron-volts) then we would observe the electromagnetic and weak forces as one electroweak force.

So does it affect the macroscopic world? Yes, in the sense that without it there would be fewer forces. But can we observe it affecting the macroscopic world now? No, because the Universe is too cold a place for it to happen except in VERY high-energy particle accelerators (the LHC at CERN being the one that can probe at those energies)


Cheers
Aj