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All four one and one for all

A theory of everything would unite the four forces of nature, but is such a thing possible?

For Symmetry Magazine:

Over the centuries, physicists have made giant strides in understanding and predicting the physical world by connecting phenomena that look very different on the surface.

One of the great success stories in physics is the unification of electricity and magnetism into the electromagnetic force in the 19th century. Experiments showed that electrical currents could deflect magnetic compass needles and that moving magnets could produce currents.

Then physicists linked another force, the weak force, with that electromagnetic force, forming a theory of electroweak interactions. Some physicists think the logical next step is merging all four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force—into a single mathematical framework: a theory of everything.

Those four fundamental forces of nature are radically different in strength and behavior. And while reality has cooperated with the human habit of finding patterns so far, creating a theory of everything is perhaps the most difficult endeavor in physics. [Read the rest at Symmetry…]