strong force
esiegel | June 21, 2013"In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature." -Murray Gell-Mann
You might think that we know it all, at least as far as knowing-it-all is possible. After all, we know that matter is made up of atoms, which are made up of electrons and nuclei, and the nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, and then the protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons.
Image credit: Hyak / Martin Savage, eScience Institute, University of Washington.
Along with the electrons, the quarks and gluons are -- as far as we know -- indivisible, which places them among the…
esiegel | June 27, 2012"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for." -Georgia O'Keeffe
When it comes to the Universe, it isn't just the stuff that's in it that's important.
Image credit: 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC).
It's also how all that stuff interacts with itself and everything else. To the best of our knowledge, there are four fundamental forces in the Universe, and they're all essential to our existence.
Image credit: Stichting Maharishi University of Management, the Netherlands.
Some of them are familiar, like gravitation. On the…