The 'Triple Point' of the 4 universal forces?

I was examining this graphic on wikipedia as I was reading up on the 'Triple Point' of substance I'm wondering... what is the latest science on the possibility that the four forces of the universe (electromagnetic, strong/weak nuclear forces and gravity) have a 'triple point'? I believe they've been able to create the conditions in advanced particle accelerators where the first three approximate eachother. Do you think they will ever be able to create the conditions where gravity will approximate the other three? Why or why not?Greg P.

I haven't got the first clue about this but it seems like an interesting question.TTFN,AW

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi Utopia,What would the x & y axis represent?Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Hehe silly. It's clearly marked. X = temperature, Y = pressure... or is it the other way around?

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Place yourself on the map at http://www.frappr.com/evc

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The thread about this map can be found here.

I think he means if we were talking about the fundamental forces instead of substance.

Hey Greg, great question The search for the Four Forces "Triple" Point was the focus of my own research for several years.Unification has been going on for over a century now. Eletric and magnetic forces were unified long ago. Decades ago we unified E/M with weak to form Electro-Weak. Grand Unification is the goal of bringing the strong force into the fold. We don't have the exact details yet, but it is so blatent that they fit together that it is proabbly just a matter of time. Interestingly, they only fit together exceptionally well when we include something called supersymmetry (SUSY). SUSY predicts a whole range of new particles, none of which we have seen yet. It's a bit odd but the next generation of particle accelerators coming on line should be able to detect them. It will actually be more interesting if they don't find them!Ok, that's the three quantised forces. Gravitation is the big problem and the focus of much of the attention. We don't yet have a good quantised version of gravitation. It does have extremely close similarities with the other forces, but it is just sufficiently different to cause a century's worth of head-scratching. In the 70s and early 80s, it was thought that SUSY could save the day again, and SuperGravity was formed (SUGRA). SUGRA was immensely successful but ultimately fell at the last hurdle. However, it paved the way for String Theory to attempt to bring the four forces together.ST still remains extremely viable in its various forms, but it does have the problem of being so far beyond the energy scales with which we can experiment that it is difficult to make too much progress without resorting to pure guesswork. However, it remains our best attempt at finding your "Triple Point" There are other approcahes to quantising gravity, but they tend not to involve the other forces directly.

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ST still remains extremely viable in its various forms, but it does have the problem of being so far beyond the energy scales with which we can experiment that it is difficult to make too much progress without resorting to pure guesswork.

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Thanks for the thorough answer! The quoted text is the root of the second part of my question. How would we ever be able to produce the pressure and temperature necessary to "melt" the strong nuclear force and gravity into one grand unified force? We're basically talking about conditions present when the universe was only minutes old! Hell, the particles that make up the particle accelerator itself would turn into "soup" under those conditions LOL. At least that's what it seems like with my limited understanding. What are your thoughts?Also, what in the world is that in your avatar? I can't quite make it out.Thanks,
Greg P.

If you click on it then it'll open it in a new window and be bigger.Its a picture of some crazy nut-job (/wink) scuba diving in a cave. Hence the name, cavediver.

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Its a picture of some crazy nut-job (/wink) scuba diving in a cave.

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Silly platonists. (wink)

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

Ahem, I think others have answered this quite well... We probably won't. The beginning of the universe and the end-point of black hole evaporation are the two principle places we would see energies high enough... neither particularly ameniable to study!But there are plenty of energy scales we will reach which will hopefully reveal the SUSY particles and maybe even some hints about the higher theory. However, we have other guides. Much of 20th C particle physics/quantum field theory was predicted with a minimum of experiemntal clues, and a great deal of aesthetic mathematics, consistency and wishful thinking. As much as these are denigrated by the heathens that frequent this site , the truth is this method works worryingly well. General Relativity had no experimental precursor other than perhaps the observation that Mercury wasn't quite behaving as it should. Oh, well that was obvious... dodgy Mercury hence GR, QED!What we do is explore viable possibilities for super-high energy theories and look at their ability to predict our observed low-energy phenomena. Finding a theory that is phsyically consistent is difficult. Finding a theory that predicts our observed low-energy world is our greatest dream. The problem is our observed world is worryingly complex: 3 generations of quark pairs, 3 generations of lepton pairs, the photon, the W+, W- and Z0, and eight gluons... not to forget possibly the Higgs, and then Gravitation sat in the background to really screw up everything. If you could find a theory to predict this lot and remain consistent, then the chance it is not THE THEORY is probably quite remote! This is why string theory generates a lot of attention, because it almost does this... not quite, not yet, but it's so close you can taste the quarks

Thanks!Only one more question... What is "20th C particle physics/quantum field theory". I looked for it on Wikipedia and couldn't find it.Greg P.

20th C = twentieth centuryHe wasn't talking about a specific theory but theory, in general, about particle physics and fields that happened in the twentieth century.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

20th Century particle physics/quantum field theory

'Quantum field theory' is a branch of particle physics developed in the 20th century (20th C).So what you should be looking up in wikipedia would be just 'Quantum field theory'.TTFN,WK