Matter Just Matters: What is the weak force? What role does it play and how does it work?
Matter Just Matters: What is the weak force? What role does it play, and how does it work?
By: Ian Davis
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Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencefacts.net%2Fnuclear-force.html&psig=AOvVaw2bwBiW9OaZcLF5rq5ygV50&ust=1622740466690000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOjd8r65-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ
Introduction:
As discussed before, we have already gone over two out of four fundamental forces; now, we are onto the weak force. Besides the strong force, I had never heard of these subatomic fundamental forces, especially their purpose and how they affect us. So I stumbled across this term while learning about particle physics, and to master my way of the forces, I will need to learn about the weak force, and I am doing so excitedly.
My Thoughts Before Research:
My first thoughts concluded that the weak force must have been an opposite to the strong force, so we will go over the strong force in a quick summary: The strong force, carried by gluons, mediates the strength between the quarks inside a large amount of sub-atomic particle, most notably the neutron and the proton. Here, we can see they use the power of quantum chromodynamics to keep order, movement, and strength for the most part. The strong force keeps all of the sub-atomic all the way to the macroscopic, together on the smallest plane.
Using this information, I had hypothesized that the weak force must be the opposite of the strong force; perhaps it tears the subatomic apart, perhaps it is not a mistake they have, but a useful subatomic force that can be used to keep the universe going, almost like cell regeneration does with a body in some aspects. Other than this information, I do not know much; besides, it is the third strongest force, just above the weakest, gravity.
In my last post discussing gravitons, we found out what mediates the weak, W, and Z bosons, specifically W-, W+, and Z0 bosons. So what are bosons? How do they mediate this? Using previous knowledge plus a dash of research, we found that Bosons are an elementary particle that follows Bose-Einstein rules; what are those, you ask?
Bose-Einstein statistics: "describe one of two possible ways in which a collection of non-interacting, indistinguishable particles may occupy a set of available discrete energy states at thermodynamic equilibrium." - Wikipedia (Bose-Einstein Statistics), which basically means it is a rule in which attempts to explain why multiple particles may attempt to occupy multiple energy states to achieve their ultimate goal, thermal equilibrium. Now we know about the Pauli-Exclusion principle, which makes us able to stay on the ground and not fall into space, or more extensively: particles cannot two or more identical particles, like fermions, cannot be in occupying more than one quantum state. Basically, they cannot clone themselves at multiple states; they follow one object that has to stay in one simple state, nothing more. The Bose-Einstein Stats. Workaround this, as their explanation directly disobeys this; instead of disregarding the Pauli Exclusion Principle, it creates its own. These particles can occupy multiple states of quantum states at once, therefore creating an exception.
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.slideserve.com%2Fshalin%2Fbose-einstein-statistics&psig=AOvVaw1G-OZBzVHR1Ij0Exn1AaDL&ust=1622737457398000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCIDfrKKu-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Now that we got that out of the way, what about the Bosons? How do they work? They are typically known as just "Force Particles" because they have the power to manipulate most of the forces like gravity and electromagnetism. There are 4 fundamental bosons, ironically 4 forces, but only 3 forces are applied here, remember the whole thing with gravitons? Like we stated, there are W and Z, Gluons, as well as Photons. Also, the experimental, or yet to be confirmed but are basically researched to where they are a thing: We got gravitons, Higgs Boson, and the elusive Bosonic Superpartners.
Now we have the definition of a Boson. So what is the weak force, we know whats it's mediated by, but we don't know what it does or who it works.
How we shall theorize:
Theory 1- Weak force allows the degradation of elementary particles, opposite of the strong force:
As we had stated previously, the weak force is a polar opposite to the strong force. As the strong force binds, the weak force unwinds; we learned that these two operate on the same plane and within the same distance. Remember my previous post in which I stated two groups of distance in the fundamental forces? Weak force and Strong Force are on the same team, the limited distance team. Here we can assume that they must do the opposite; otherwise, if we had two of the same, we would not have radiation and or annihilation, as any force outside in an attempt to remove would be eliminated by two of the same forces. Therefore the weak force must in some way degrade it, not as strong as the strong force, but actually enough to keep the operations on par.
Theory 2- Weak force ironically helps the strong force in its job, but at a weaker position:
Whatever the case may be, the weak force directly correlates with its name, as the weak force does not accurately describe its own name. So with this assumption, we can presume that the Weak Force can help with the Strong Force, hence called the weak force. But I seriously doubt this possibility as we had already explained the problem with all positives and no negative pushback in our previous theory.
Theory 3- The Weak Force does not at all interact with the strong force and does not have correlation despite the name:
Going out on a limb here, but this theory could be more plausible than the previous theory. I theorize that the weak force does not have the strength limitations that would be required to be within the limitations of the Strong Force, therefore making it inert from its decisions, instead of for this theory, it propose that it is actually a larger acting force, perhaps between sub-atomic particles like the neutrons and protons. Perhaps it can still degrade multiple aspects of a particle, but not as violent as the strength of the Strong Force keeps it.
My best option lies with Theory 1.
My Thoughts After Research:
What is the Weak Force? Weak Force, also known as Weak Interaction, is one of the universe's four fundamental forces. As opposed to the rest of the forces, the Weak Force does not play a role in keeping objects or particles together or close but instead has a bigger hand at decay. Stronger than gravity, the Weak Force is a limited distance and third strongest force on the array and is most known for its grander effects of playing a role in powering stars and creating elements.
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencefacts.net%2Fweak-nuclear-force.html&psig=AOvVaw0yxwuGLxzkxu2U90cdUIJO&ust=1622737214481000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCLjB9q6t-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAW
But what does it do? If you have heard of beta-decay, or the process of a neutron completely changing into a proton and expelling an electron (electron as a new projectile and a byproduct), then you will be familiar with the weak force, as it's responsible for this action. How does this work? It changes these particles via the Bosons or force carriers of the forces; in this case, we are dealing with W Bosons, the negative and positive versions, respectively, as well as the Z Bosons. By emitting electricity changed W Boson, it can completely change the makeup of a quark, inadvertently changing the "flavor." As we know, when the flavor of a quark is changed, the deity it has changed; in this case, one of the three quarks was switched from a neutron to a proton to now identify as a proton; this can happen in either way. This actually helps cause nuclear fission, therefore releasing energy and byproducts, which can create heavier elements and so on and so forth. On the other hand, the Z boson is neutrally charged and is relatively weak for the neutral current. The mass-energy for the Neg. charged W boson or W^- is about 80 giga-electron volt, opposed Z boson is about 91.2 GeV, the mass does not matter too much, but it does help understand what the bosons are; for context, a bottom quark is about 4.18 GeV/c^2 or the top quark is about 173.07 GeV/c^2, the c^2 means the speed of light squared. For extra context, one GeV/c^2 is about 1.78266191 × 10-27 kilograms.
As we were saying, this W boson containing 80 GeV is a lot of energy, meaning it cannot possibly leave the nucleus as it would take more energy than the resulting surrounding has to get rid of it in the first place. With this, we can follow the energy-time uncertainty principle, or the particle's properties are automatically determined with a fundamental limit due to initiatives such as x position, p momentum, and any other physical properties. With this principle, it would rapidly decay into an electron and an electron anti-neutrino. Electron neutrinos are lepton and have a zero net electric charge - together with the electron and quark, they can form the first generation of leptons. There is a whole unit of this, but all you need to know is that they are the decay byproduct.
"A beta-minus decay process involves the creation and disappearance of a W− boson. A down quark decays into a W− boson and an up quark. The W− boson subsequently decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino." - Credit and found: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/particle-physics/content-section-8.1#:~:text=A%20W%E2%88%92%20boson%20is%20emitted%20with,electric%20charge%20in%20the%20process.&text=A%20down%20quark%20decays%20into,electron%20and%20an%20electron%20antineutrino.
Credit and found: https://g.co/kgs/F4ZUDo
Due to simple laws, in weak force interactions, the total number of quarks minus the total number of antiquarks is the same number before and after this process. As well as leptons and antileptons will be conserved, even though there were no leptons present before, but after, there is one lepton and one antilepton. The reason why anti and regular neutrinos are present after the beta-decay is if there was not, the rule of lepton conservation would be violated. The lepton conservation rule states: the sum of lepton numbers before and after the interaction must be the same, or basically the rule of conservation of everything. "For electrons and electron neutrinos, Le=1; for their antiparticles, Le=−1; all other particles have Le=0" from: Physics LibreTexts or 1 + (-1) =0 as it should be.
BEFORE we discuss this next section, I will have to quickly explain a Higgs Field. The Higgs Field is thought to be a field of energy that exist in every single region of the universe. This field is accompanied by a particle, the Higgs Boson (125 and 127 GeV/c2) which is utilized by the Higgs Field to interact with other particle when they react there, like an electron. Particle that interact with this field are given a certain mass and when they pass, they will become slower as they pass through, the result, is the particle gaining mass and no allowed to travel the speed of light due to having mass. "If the Higgs field did not exist, particles would not have the mass required to attract one another, and would float around freely at light speed. Also, gravity would not exist because mass would not be there to attract other mass." - Wikipedia (Higgs field) as this is a very plausible theory, because article would float around at the speed of light, but some article in the boson and regular fields have mass, therefore making this plausible.
Photons, the electromagnetic force carrier, can play a role with the weak force as due to the Electroweak theory, which states that there are 4 gauge bosons which deal with the weak force, of course we know three of them W-, W+, Z0, and know they propose that photons may have a hand in it. According to this theory, a photon can bypass the Higgs Field while retaining NO mass and pass at the speed of light being a boson.
There are rule to all weak interactions, as OpenLearn.org states: "
- electric charge is conserved
- the number of quarks minus the number of antiquarks is conserved
- the number of leptons minus the number of antileptons is conserved
- flavor changing of quarks or leptons is allowed, as long as these three rules are obeyed."
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKSVAedOjz8Y&psig=AOvVaw0CqkPb1kufntWIQBBk4AY3&ust=1622737065874000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCJjwuuas-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAR
Summary:
I would like to say that my Theory 1 is correct if we apply general terms and a more broad sense of learning to this. As we discover, a weak force is a supplemental force with a pervasive amount of use, even though it is relatively unknown. It allows for radiation and decay, specifically beta decay, by allowing its force carriers to override the quark's flavors using charges and stopping quantum chromodynamics in its tracks. It does this by charging the W and using the Z bosons to stop the flavors from doing their job; from here, the process is interrupted, and the universe fixes itself by apply new measures, this turns the quark into a new flavor, and with that changes the entire identity of the subatomic particle it occupies, like from a proton to a neutron. The W and Z bosons are mediators of neutrinos, and their absorption and emission, they can create three flavors of neutrinos in the lepton category: electron neutrinos (νe), muon neutrinos (νμ), or tau neutrinos (ντ) as well as the charged, or oppositely charged versions of them. They were thought to be massless, but their mass is so tiny that it does not have any true effect, as with most fermions. Neutrino is technically classified as a fermion, just like quarks and leptons, and has to have a spin of a fraction or 1/2 and 3/2, no simple numbers. They are not charged and are neutral, hence their name, but their antineutrino counterpart, strangely enough, does not have a charge and has the exact same spin value of 1/2. Instead, they result from chirality or the "direction" they spin instead of charge; they can be either left-handed or right-handed for anti and normal counterparts; this is called chirality. Neutrinos are so small or about <2.14 × 10−37 kg and so unaffected by forces that they can easily pass through matter fast enough to either not be detected or pull from either of the forces.
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoffeeshopphysics.com%2Farticles%2F2012-07%2F04_bouncing_baby_boson%2F&psig=AOvVaw1U8AFHJAt6IBTa_994Wrek&ust=1622736864170000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCKjdko-s-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAO
Fun facts:
- Like the bosons of W and Z, the particles listed have a very short half-life of 3×10^−25 seconds.
- Changing an element to another, especially in the case of the weak force, is called Nuclear Transmutation; for the weak force, they act in the part of the W± boson charge that induces electron or positron emission or absorption.
- Electron neutrinos only appear together with positrons or electron-antineutrinos, opposed to electron antineutrinos appear with electrons or electron neutrino.
- Chirality can be opposed due to their description of left and right-handed variants, similarly to quantum chromodynamics and colors.
- A neutrino can only interact with two forces, gravity and the weak force, even though the weak force has a concise range and gravity is far too weak to interact, leaving neutrinos practically free.
Explained:
There is no easy way to explain the weak force without getting into some pretty big terms, so I will try my best. The weak force is one of the four fundamental forces, the third strongest, and deals in decay rather than the ability to hold together like its peer forces. The decay that it particularly deals in is beta decay, or removing an electron (or opposite, a positron) from the general atom. How the weak force manages to do this is pretty spectacular:
All forces have force carriers, we know three out of four of the force carriers, and we know that the weak force uses the W and Z bosons. To summarize them, they are charged and neutral particles, respectively, as W can be positive (rarely) or negative (more common) and be emitted. When they are emitted, they are distributed to quarks, and while this disobeys rules, it changes the flavor of the quark itself, therefore changing the deity of the area where the quark lies. If it were to change one quark, it could change a proton to a neutron and vice versa; this creates a disturbance in the atom, pushes out an electron and creates beta decay (also pushes out a neutrino as a byproduct), and changes the element or to an isotope via nuclear transmutation.
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBeta_decay&psig=AOvVaw3MRXI_fdsVc5hM5C92mI-l&ust=1622737666300000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCKDshoSv-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI
The weak force has many effects: it allows the burning of "fuel" in stars like the sun, it also underlies the radiation and instability of unstable subatomic particles like mesons. It can be seen as the immune system of unstable systems using radiation in some aspects.
Credit and found: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2F49254-weak-force.html&psig=AOvVaw2cILJpzCKU8TEAixUb1TiU&ust=1622737580971000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCMCp-9qu-fACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
Sources:
- https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/particle-physics/content-section-8.1#:~:text=A%20W%E2%88%92%20boson%20is%20emitted%20with,electric%20charge%20in%20the%20process.&text=A%20down%20quark%20decays%20into,electron%20and%20an%20electron%20antineutrino.
- https://g.co/kgs/F4ZUDo
- https://www.livescience.com/49254-weak-force.html
- https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3230451219811799720/146004755273896214
- https://www.thoughtco.com/boson-2699112
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle
- https://g.co/kgs/ytmM11
- https://home.cern/science/physics/z-boson#:~:text=Discovered%20in%201983%20by%20physicists,is%20a%20neutral%20elementary%20particle.&text=By%20emitting%20an%20electrically%20charged,the%20flavour%20of%20its%20quarks.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
- https://www.newscientist.com/definition/weak-nuclear-force/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
- https://g.co/kgs/wdbzGb
- https://www.britannica.com/science/weak-force#:~:text=Weak%20interaction%2C%20also%20called%20weak,reaction%20that%20fuels%20the%20Sun.
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