Vacuum energy. Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space throughout the entire Universe. One contribution to the vacuum energy may be from virtual particles which are thought to be particle pairs that blink into existence and then annihilate in a timespan too short to observe. They are expected to do this everywhere, throughout the Universe. Their behavior is codified in Heisenberg's energy–time uncertainty principle. Still, the exact effect of such fleeting bits of energy is difficult to quantify.
The effects of vacuum energy can be experimentally observed in various phenomena such as spontaneous emission, the Casimir effect and the Lamb shift, and are thought to influence the behavior of the Universe on cosmological scales. Origin[edit] Summing over all possible oscillators at all points in space gives an infinite quantity. Additional contributions to the vacuum energy come from spontaneous symmetry breaking in quantum field theory. Implications[edit] [citation needed] Theory of everything. A theory of everything (ToE) or final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.[1]:6 Finding a ToE is one of the major unsolved problems in physics. Over the past few centuries, two theoretical frameworks have been developed that, as a whole, most closely resemble a ToE.
The two theories upon which all modern physics rests are general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT). GR is a theoretical framework that only focuses on the force of gravity for understanding the universe in regions of both large-scale and high-mass: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc. On the other hand, QFT is a theoretical framework that only focuses on three non-gravitational forces for understanding the universe in regions of both small scale and low mass: sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, etc.
Historical antecedents[edit] [edit] Quantum gravity. Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe the force of gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. Although a quantum theory of gravity is needed in order to reconcile general relativity with the principles of quantum mechanics, difficulties arise when one attempts to apply the usual prescriptions of quantum field theory to the force of gravity.[3] From a technical point of view, the problem is that the theory one gets in this way is not renormalizable and therefore cannot be used to make meaningful physical predictions. As a result, theorists have taken up more radical approaches to the problem of quantum gravity, the most popular approaches being string theory and loop quantum gravity.[4] Strictly speaking, the aim of quantum gravity is only to describe the quantum behavior of the gravitational field and should not be confused with the objective of unifying all fundamental interactions into a single mathematical framework.
String (physics) In physics, a string is a physical object that appears in string theory and related subjects. Unlike elementary particles, which are zero-dimensional or point-like by definition, strings are one-dimensional extended objects. Theories in which the fundamental objects are strings rather than point particles automatically have many properties that are expected to hold in a fundamental theory of physics.
Most notably, a theory of strings that evolve and interact according to the rules of quantum mechanics will automatically describe quantum gravity. In string theory, the strings may be open (forming a segment with two endpoints) or closed (forming a loop like a circle) and may have other special properties. In theories of particle physics based on string theory, the characteristic length scale of strings is typically on the order of the Planck length, the scale at which the effects of quantum gravity are believed to become significant. Strings can be either open or closed. Brane. In string theory and related theories, D-branes are an important class of branes that arise when one considers open strings.
As an open string propagates through spacetime, its endpoints are required to lie on a D-brane. The letter "D" in D-brane refers to the fact that we impose a certain mathematical condition on the system known as the Dirichlet boundary condition. The study of D-branes has led to important results, such as the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, which has shed light on many problems in quantum field theory. See also[edit] References[edit] Jump up ^ Moore, Gregory (2005). "What is... a Brane? " Spontaneous symmetry breaking. Consider the bottom of an empty wine bottle, a symmetrical upward dome with a trough for sediment. If a ball is put in a particular position at the peak of the dome, the circumstances are symmetrical with respect to rotating the wine bottle.
But the ball may spontaneously break this symmetry and move into the trough, a point of lowest energy. The bottle and the ball continue to have symmetry, but the system does not.[4] Most simple phases of matter and phase-transitions, like crystals, magnets, and conventional superconductors can be simply understood from the viewpoint of spontaneous symmetry breaking. Notable exceptions include topological phases of matter like the fractional quantum Hall effect. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics[edit] Spontaneous symmetry breaking simplified: - At high energy levels (left) the ball settles in the center, and the result is symmetrical. Particle physics[edit] Chiral symmetry[edit] Higgs mechanism[edit] Condensed matter physics[edit] , where such that . Antimatter. In particle physics, antimatter is material composed of antiparticles, which have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and other particle properties such as lepton and baryon number.
Encounters between particles and antiparticles lead to the annihilation of both, giving rise to varying proportions of high-energy photons (gamma rays), neutrinos, and lower-mass particle–antiparticle pairs. Setting aside the mass of any product neutrinos, which represent released energy which generally continues to be unavailable, the end result of annihilation is a release of energy available to do work, proportional to the total matter and antimatter mass, in accord with the mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc2.[1] Antiparticles bind with each other to form antimatter just as ordinary particles bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron) and an antiproton can form an antihydrogen atom. History of the concept Notation Positrons. Spin (physics) In quantum mechanics and particle physics, spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, composite particles (hadrons), and atomic nuclei.[1][2] Spin is a solely quantum-mechanical phenomenon; it does not have a counterpart in classical mechanics (despite the term spin being reminiscent of classical phenomena such as a planet spinning on its axis).[2] Spin is one of two types of angular momentum in quantum mechanics, the other being orbital angular momentum.
Orbital angular momentum is the quantum-mechanical counterpart to the classical notion of angular momentum: it arises when a particle executes a rotating or twisting trajectory (such as when an electron orbits a nucleus).[3][4] The existence of spin angular momentum is inferred from experiments, such as the Stern–Gerlach experiment, in which particles are observed to possess angular momentum that cannot be accounted for by orbital angular momentum alone.[5] where h is the Planck constant. Elementary particle. In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle whose substructure is unknown, thus it is unknown whether it is composed of other particles.[1] Known elementary particles include the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and "antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge bosons and Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles" that mediate interactions among fermions.[1] A particle containing two or more elementary particles is a composite particle.
Everyday matter is composed of atoms, once presumed to be matter's elementary particles—atom meaning "indivisible" in Greek—although the atom's existence remained controversial until about 1910, as some leading physicists regarded molecules as mathematical illusions, and matter as ultimately composed of energy.[1][2] Soon, subatomic constituents of the atom were identified. Overview[edit] Main article: Standard Model. Fundamental interaction. Fundamental interactions, also called fundamental forces or interactive forces, are modeled in fundamental physics as patterns of relations in physical systems, evolving over time, that appear not reducible to relations among entities more basic.
Four fundamental interactions are conventionally recognized: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. Everyday phenomena of human experience are mediated via gravitation and electromagnetism. The strong interaction, synthesizing chemical elements via nuclear fusion within stars, holds together the atom's nucleus, and is released during an atomic bomb's detonation. The weak interaction is involved in radioactive decay. In modern physics, gravitation is the only fundamental interaction still modeled as classical/continuous (versus quantum/discrete). Beyond the Standard Model, some theorists work to unite the electroweak and strong interactions within a Grand Unified Theory (GUT).
The interactions[edit] Gravitation[edit]