Title Page Paul Matteri

What is Grand Unified Theory? Unified field theory is an attempt to describe all fundamental forces and the relationships between elementary particles in terms of a single theoretical framework.

Current Fundamental Forces Electromagnetic Weak Strong Gravity

The Road to Unification

The History of Grand Unified Theory

Electricity and Magnetism Michael Faraday: Born: September 22, 1791 Died: August 25, 1867 English physicist and chemist whose many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism.

Electricity and Magnetism James Maxwell Born June 13, 1831, Edinburgh, Scotland died November 5, 1879, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England Scottish physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. Incorporated light and wave phenomena into electromagnetism

Electricity and Magnetism In 1905 Einstein’s special theory of relativity showed that electricity and magnetism were link and that Maxwell was correct. The single force of Electromagnetism is born.

Electroweak Force Sheldon Glashow Abdus Salam Steven Weinberg Each physicist independently found that the weak nuclear force could be unified with electromagnetic force.

Electroweak Force At extremely high energies, 1015 GeV the electromagnetic and weak forces become the same. The relationship is based on the exchange of four particles: the photon of EM interactions, two charged W particles and a neutral Z particle.

Electroweak Force

Strong Nuclear Force Quantum Chromodynamics was developed to explain strong force during the 1970s. Quarks are believed interact by exchanging gluons. The hope is to use that similarity to unify strong with electroweak force. The unification cannot be found because energy levels 1012 higher than those needed to develop the electroweak force are required to test further unification.

Strong Nuclear Force

Gravity Newton showed that both astronomical and terrestrial motion could be explained with gravitation In 1915 Einstein’s theory of general relativity was written. Einstein spent 30 years trying to unify EM with gravity and failed.

The Future of the Grand Unified Theories

Future Gravity may be unified by superstring theory, which is the best theory right now for unification. Higher energy experiments are needed to study the strong force and its unification with electroweak. More study of electroweak is still needed. By using the simplest version of the theory a calculation was performed that determined a proton life several orders of magnitude too short, from 1029 to 1031 years. Experiments show that the life of a proton is greater than 1032 years.

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