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LabLad

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  1. For non-physicists I will provide a short introduction: There are three fundamental interactions in the Standard Model we are studying and they are (in no particular order) 1) The Electromagnetic interaction 2) The Strong Nuclear interaction 3) The Weak Nuclear interaction There are additional efforts to introduce the Gravitational interaction to the Standard Model (SM) as well but non so far have been proven due to technological difficulties of reaching such high energy levels even in CERN's LHC. The first successful unification was the Electroweak interaction, a huge triumph of the Standard Model that has advanced physics immensely even as far as Physical Cosmology where evidence has been gathered that once there was an Electroweak Epoch in the evolution of the universe. All the rage these days (more like decades) is around Grand Unification Theory (GUT) efforts such as supersymmetry (SUSY) and the superstring theory (SUST) models that try to achieve Grand Unification which means uniting all the three interactions listed above albeit SUST models also aim for the Theory of Everything (TOE) which means uniting the three interactions listed above and the 4th - gravitation. There are other, less known, candidates for ToE such as Quantum Loop Gravity. All of the three interactions listed above have dimensionless parameters in the natural unit system (G=c=h=1 - in short) known as gauge coupling constants (there are other dimensionless parameters, around 26 in the SM alone) however these constants aren't all that "constant" which rising energy/length and momentum their values change and they do so in a manner that makes it obvious that they have to "meet" on a dimensionless numerical value-momentum graph at some point. If you are wondering how is it so obvious, the explanation is rather simple: Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) has a gauge coupling denoted by e albeit it is more common to use the Greek letter alpha such that e=(4pi*alpha)^1/2 where the alpha is known as the fine-structure constant and is measured to an incredible value to about the 14th decimal with a not-too-high uncertainty. The Electromagnetic coupling rises with the rising energy/length and momentum scale. it goes from about 1/137.036 to 1/127.9 on the scale of around 91 GeV - around the mass of a Z Boson. In Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) we have an g which is much higher that the QED's e, usually denoted with a gs to mark that it is the strong interaction. The value of this coupling decreases instead of increasing, leading to the discovery of asymptotic freedom. One value increases the other increases, they have to meet just as it happened with the electroweak unification (on a far smaller energy/length scale). This is only the basic layman explanation but it is, in my modest opinion, the most interesting subject matter in physics and maybe all of science
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