The Elegant Universe (19 page)

And so, if you are keeping score, by the 1970s physicists had developed a sensible and successful quantum-mechanical description of three of the four forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic) and had shown that two of the three (weak and electromagnetic) actually share a common origin (the electroweak force). During the past two decades, physicists have subjected this quantum-mechanical treatment of the three nongravitational forces—as they act among themselves and the matter particles introduced in Chapter 1—to an enormous amount of experimental scrutiny The theory has met all such challenges with aplomb. Once experimentalists measure some 19 parameters (the masses of the particles in Table 1.1, their force charges as recorded in the table in endnote 1 to Chapter 1, the strengths of the three nongravitational forces in Table 1.2, as well as a few other numbers we need not discuss), and theorists input these numbers into the quantum field theories of the matter particles and the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, the subsequent predictions of the theory regarding the microcosmos agree spectacularly with experimental results. This is true up to the energies capable of pulverizing matter into bits as small as a billionth of a billionth of a meter, the current technological limit. For this reason, physicists call the theory of the three nongravitational forces and the three families of matter particles the standard theory, or (more often) the standard model of particle physics.

Messenger Particles

According to the standard model, just as the photon is the smallest constituent of an electromagnetic field, the strong and the weak force fields have smallest constituents as well. As we discussed briefly in Chapter 1, the smallest bundles of the strong force are known as gluons, and those of the weak force are known as weak gauge bosons (or more precisely, the W and Z bosons). The standard model instructs us to think of these force particles as having no internal structure—in this framework they are every bit as elementary as the particles in the three families of matter.

The photons, gluons, and weak gauge bosons provide the microscopic mechanism for transmitting the forces they constitute. For example, when one electrically charged particle repels another of like electric charge, you can think of it roughly in terms of each particle being surrounded by an electric field—a “cloud” or “mist” of “electric-essence”—and the force each particle feels arises from the repulsion between their respective force fields. The more precise microscopic description of how they repel each other, though, is somewhat different. An electromagnetic field is composed of a swarm of photons; the interaction between two charged particles actually arises from their “shooting” photons back and forth between themselves. In rough analogy to the way in which you can affect a fellow ice-skater’s motion and your own by hurling a barrage of bowling balls at him or her, two electrically charged particles influence each other by exchanging these smallest bundles of light.

An important failing of the ice-skater analogy is that the exchange of bowling balls is always “repulsive”—it always drives the skaters apart. On the contrary, two oppositely charged particles also interact through the exchange of photons, although the resulting electromagnetic force is attractive. It’s as if the photon is not so much the transmitter of the force per se, but rather the transmitter of a message of how the recipient must respond to the force in question. For like-charged particles, the photon carries the message “move apart,” while for oppositely charged particles it carries the message “come together.” For this reason the photon is sometimes referred to as the messenger particle for the electromagnetic force. Similarly, the gluons and weak gauge bosons are the messenger particles for the strong and weak nuclear forces. The strong force, which keeps quarks locked up inside of protons and neutrons, arises from individual quarks exchanging gluons. The gluons, so to speak, provide the “glue” that keeps these subatomic particles stuck together. The weak force, which is responsible for certain kinds of particle transmutations involved in radioactive decay, is mediated by the weak gauge bosons.

Gauge Symmetry

You may have realized that the odd man out in our discussion of the quantum theory of the forces of nature is gravity. Given the successful approach physicists have used with the other three forces, you might suggest that physicists seek a quantum field theory of the gravitational force—a theory in which the smallest bundle of a gravitational force field, the graviton, would be its messenger particle. At first sight, as we now note, this suggestion would appear to be particularly apt because the quantum field theory of the three nongravitational forces reveals that there is a tantalizing similarity between them and an aspect of the gravitational force we encountered in Chapter 3.

Recall that the gravitational force allows us to declare that all observers—regardless of their state of motion—are on absolutely equal footing. Even those whom we would normally think of as accelerating may claim to be at rest, since they can attribute the force they feel to their being immersed in a gravitational field. In this sense, gravity enforces the symmetry: it ensures the equal validity of all possible observational points of view, all possible frames of reference. The similarity with the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces is that they too are all connected with enforcing symmetries, albeit ones that are significantly more abstract than the one associated with gravity.

To get a rough feel for these rather subtle symmetry principles, let’s consider one important example. As we recorded in the table in endnote 1 of Chapter 1, each quark comes in three “colors” (fancifully called red, green, and blue, although these are merely labels and have no relation to color in the usual visual sense), which determine how it responds to the strong force in much the same way that its electric charge determines how it responds to the electromagnetic force. All the data that have been collected establish that there is a symmetry among the quarks in the sense that the interactions between any two like-colored quarks (red with red, green with green, or blue with blue) are all identical, and similarly, the interactions between any two unlike-colored quarks (red with green, green with blue, or blue with red) are also identical. In fact, the data support something even more striking. If the three colors—the three different strong charges—that a quark can carry were all shifted in a particular manner (roughly speaking, in our fanciful chromatic language, if red, green, and blue were shifted, for instance, to yellow, indigo, and violet), and even if the details of this shift were to change from moment to moment or from place to place, the interactions between the quarks would be, again, completely unchanged. For this reason, just as we say that a sphere exemplifies rotational symmetry because it looks the same regardless of how we rotate it around in our hands or how we shift the angle from which we view it, we say that the universe exemplifies strong force symmetry: Physics is unchanged by—it is completely insensitive to—these force-charge shifts. For historical reasons, physicists also say that the strong force symmetry is an example of a gauge symmetry.

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Here is the essential point. Just as the symmetry between all possible observational vantage points in general relativity requires the existence of the gravitational force, developments relying on work of Hermann Weyl in the 1920s and Chen-Ning Yang and Robert Mills in the 1950s showed that gauge symmetries require the existence of yet other forces. Much like a sensitive environmental-control system that keeps temperature, air pressure, and humidity in an area completely constant by compensating perfectly for any exterior influences, certain kinds of force fields, according to Yang and Mills, will provide perfect compensation for shifts in force charges, thereby keeping the physical interactions between the particles completely unchanged. For the case of the gauge symmetry associated with shifting quark-color charges, the required force is none other than the strong force itself. That is, without the strong force, physics would change under the kinds of shifts of color charges indicated above. This realization shows that, although the gravitational force and the strong force have vastly different properties (recall, for example, that gravity is far feebler than the strong force and operates over enormously larger distances), they do have a somewhat similar heritage: they are each required in order that the universe embody particular symmetries. Moreover, a similar discussion applies to the weak and electromagnetic forces, showing that their existence, too, is bound up with yet other gauge symmetries—the so-called weak and electromagnetic gauge symmetries. And hence, all four forces are directly associated with principles of symmetry.

This common feature of the four forces would seem to bode well for the suggestion made at the beginning of this section. Namely, in our effort to incorporate quantum mechanics into general relativity we should seek a quantum field theory of the gravitational force, much as physicists have discovered successful quantum field theories of the other three forces. Over the years, such reasoning has inspired a prodigious and distinguished group of physicists to follow this path vigorously, but the terrain has proven to be fraught with danger, and no one has succeeded in traversing it completely. Let’s see why.

General Relativity vs. Quantum Mechanics

The usual realm of applicability of general relativity is that of large, astronomical distance scales. On such distances Einstein’s theory implies that the absence of mass means that space is flat, as illustrated in Figure 3.3. In seeking to merge general relativity with quantum mechanics we must now change our focus sharply and examine the microscopic properties of space. We illustrate this in Figure 5.1 by zooming in and sequentially magnifying ever smaller regions of the spatial fabric. At first, as we zoom in, not much happens; as we see in the first three levels of magnification in Figure 5.1, the structure of space retains the same basic form. Reasoning from a purely classical standpoint, we would expect this placid and flat image of space to persist all the way to arbitrarily small length scales. But quantum mechanics changes this conclusion radically. Everything is subject to the quantum fluctuations inherent in the uncertainty principle—even the gravitational field. Although classical reasoning implies that empty space has zero gravitational field, quantum mechanics shows that on average it is zero, but that its actual value undulates up and down due to quantum fluctuations. Moreover, the uncertainty principle tells us that the size of the undulations of the gravitational field gets larger as we focus our attention on smaller regions of space. Quantum mechanics shows that nothing likes to be cornered; narrowing the spatial focus leads to ever larger undulations.

As gravitational fields are reflected by curvature, these quantum fluctuations manifest themselves as increasingly violent distortions of the surrounding space. We see the glimmers of such distortions emerging in the fourth level of magnification in Figure 5.1. By probing to even smaller distance scales, as we do in the fifth level of Figure 5.1, we see that the random quantum mechanical undulations in the gravitational field correspond to such severe warpings of space that it no longer resembles a gently curving geometrical object such as the rubber-membrane analogy used in our discussion in Chapter 3. Rather, it takes on the frothing, turbulent, twisted form illustrated in the uppermost part of the figure. John Wheeler coined the term quantum foam to describe the frenzy revealed by such an ultramicroscopic examination of space (and time)—it describes an unfamiliar arena of the universe in which the conventional notions of left and right, back and forth, up and down (and even of before and after) lose their meaning. It is on such short distance scales that we encounter the fundamental incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics. The notion of a smooth spatial geometry, the central principle of general relativity, is destroyed by the violent fluctuations of the quantum world on short distance scales. On ultramicroscopic scales, the central feature of quantum mechanics—the uncertainty principle—is in direct conflict with the central feature of general relativity—the smooth geometrical model of space (and of spacetime).

In practice, this conflict rears its head in a very concrete manner. Calculations that merge the equations of general relativity and those of quantum mechanics typically yield one and the same ridiculous answer: infinity. Like a sharp rap on the wrist from an old-time schoolteacher, an infinite answer is nature’s way of telling us that we are doing something that is quite wrong.6 The equations of general relativity cannot handle the roiling frenzy of quantum foam.

Notice, however, that as we recede to more ordinary distances (following the sequence of drawings in Figure 5.1 in reverse), the random, violent small-scale undulations cancel each other out—in much the same way that, on average, our compulsive borrower’s bank account shows no evidence of his compulsion—and the concept of a smooth geometry for the fabric of the universe once again becomes accurate. It’s like what you experience when you look at a dot-matrix picture: From far away the dots that compose the picture blend together and create the impression of a smooth image whose variations in lightness seamlessly and gently change from one area to another. When you inspect the picture on finer distance scales you realize, however, that it markedly differs from its smooth, long-distance appearance. It is nothing but a collection of discrete dots, each quite separate from the others. But note that you become aware of the discrete nature of the picture only when you examine it on the smallest of scales; from far away it looks smooth. Similarly, the fabric of spacetime appears to be smooth except when examined with ultramicroscopic precision. This is why general relativity works on large enough distance (and time) scales—the scales relevant for many typical astronomical applications—but is rendered inconsistent on short distance (and time) scales. The central tenet of a smooth and gently curving geometry is justified in the large but breaks down due to quantum fluctuations when pushed to the small.