This Is How 2 Fundamental Forces Were Once The Same...

What do bar magnets, Mexican hats and the early Universe have in common? This video works through such a thought, beginning with magnetism and builds up to explaining the origins of Electroweak theory - where 2 of the 4 Fundamental Forces of Nature become one of the same.
Magnetism in materials is due to the overall Spin angular momentum of electrons within it. Above the Curie Temperature, materials are Paramagnets, showing only induced magnetism when in the magnetic field. Below this critical temperature, and the material transitions into becoming a 'permanent' ferromagnet. At the Curie Temperature, all of the randomly orientated paramagnetic spins spontaneously align in a random direction which breaks symmetry within the system.
We examine the form of the Mexican hat potential (Energy) in each case and draw conclusions onto different types of excitations which can occur throughout the material (such as Magnons/Spin Waves in magnets). Goldstone's Theorem tells us we get a massless excitation (particle) each time a symmetry is broken. This combined with gauge fields gives a way for force mediating particles (Bosons) to gain mass through the Higgs Mechanism.
Combined with ideas from the standard model of particle physics and quantum field theory (QFT), the fact that the weak nuclear force bosons can carry charge, the fundamental interaction unit of electromagnetism becomes peculiar, suggesting the two forces could have separated from a combined force due to spontaneous symmetry breaking. The temperatures needed for the unification only naturally occurred one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang in the very early Universe. This is ElectroWeak theory, and could be extended to include the Strong Nuclear Force in a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) which could lead to supersymmetry and supersymmetric particles in the early universe.
The observation of mass in fermions (normal matter) as well as discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 is supporting evidence of ElectroWeak. If gravity could somehow be included, this could lead to the Theory of Everything, although theories of quantum gravity are needed first. Quantum Mechanics explains the really small and Einstein's General Relativity the very large, however quantum gravity is not understood. Could String Theory or Quantum Loop gravity provide an answer? Nonetheless, the concepts discussed in this video provide insight on how humanity might someday reach there.
0:00 - Fundamentals of Paramagnetism and Ferromagnetism
1:31 - Quantum Mechanics, Spin and the Origin of Magnetism
3:13 - Energy, Order and Physical Symmetry
5:25 - Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
7:25 - Order Parameter and the Mexican Hat Potential
8:25 - Massive and Massless Excitations/Particles (Goldstone Modes and Bosons)
10:29 - Gauge Fields and the Higgs Mechanism
12:07 - Relation to the Four Fundamental Forces of Nature, the Standard Model and Higgs Boson
14:08 - Early Universe and ElectroWeak Unification
15:00 - Grand Unified Theories, QM, GR and Quantum Gravity

[@noscreadur]

Hands down the best explanation I've hears so far that explains symetry breaking, and the unification of the (electro)magnetic and weak forces.

[@OVAstronomy]

Much appreciated!

[@81giorikas]

@@OVAstronomy Very nice video. Very nice and simplified. But, I have to ask. Isn't string theory officially dead? I mean LHC should have given something but...

[@jaybingham3711]

Exceptional presentation. And, yes...I've got an hour to burn. So bring on the gauge fields.

[@alphalunamare]

I am glad that the adverts appeared at 12:10 .. I felt the distinct need for a beer! I am still confused over Ph1 and Phi2 for magnetism and hence the tequila. I do feel that I know more than I did before though. I never really understood, well I still don't actually, whether Physicist's really believed all the group theory stuff or whether it is just happy labelling's of something not quite yet adequately understood. I can see that the usage of Groups can provide a map of all the interactions but not any insight into their causation. So saying that a theory has a specific group structure is useless in any predictive sense, all you can do is look at other perhaps related groups structurally and see if there are any insights to be gained. Having said that I now understand why Prof Weigold (Cardiff) said that it was important to know the structure of all potential Groups. I feel that your presentation gives one a better understanding of how Physicist's think about things and hence enables better interpretation :-)

[@OVAstronomy]

Haha, yeah group theory can be quite abstract and hard to come to terms to, especially to make physical sense of. But it is far more efficient than having to otherwise spend ages writing out quantum mechanics or requiring a supercomputer to solve problems in CMP.

[@tbjtbj7930]

The delivery could do with being slightly slower - gives me time to get my head around things. Good work!

[@williambenson1477]

great presentation...but i cant stop thinking im listening to the ship computer from 'Red Dwarf'

[@davidnelson2204]

Your videos are extremely informative. I studied biochemistry, but had a big place in me heart for physics. Should post this on your gravity video, but can all fundamental forces be “modes” of a same single force that each act at their own scale? Strong and weak forces work on atomic scale, electromagnetic forces on meter scales, and gravity on the largest? Weak and gravity are weird due to being on the smallest and largest scales… basically particles are “captured” in their own “regime”?

[@OVAstronomy]

Thank you for the nice comment and the question! The fundamental forces act in different quantum fields. These fields while separate do seem to have been derived from unified forces - like the electroweak mentioned in this video or a GUT (grand unified force) or a force involving gravity, although the latter two haven't been verified experimentally. Different particles interact with each field based on their fundamental properties; charge, mass, color charge, weak charge etc. which you could interpret as different modes of a single force, but typically we use the idea of different fields which are non interacting with each other after symmetry breaking. Modes of vibration are an idea in string theory though which models forces as different vibrational modes on fundamental strings - but this is purely speculative at the moment! Sorry I can't give a more detailed response, this area of physics is some of the most exciting and currently researched!

[@davidnelson2204]

@@OVAstronomy you did perfectly! Just needed to know the fields were separate post cooldown, at least in best current views.

[@davidnelson2204]

@@OVAstronomy Just spitballing/note padding here, and I have 0 evidence for this thinking, but: all forces and charges were unified and one thing at the start of the universe. No mass; just energy. First thing to drop off is gravity, as the massless “stuff” cools down a little. This creates the first “change” in space time. This change separates this protoparticle into 2 fundamentally different things. The “stuff with mass” gets converted preferentially into matter rather than antimatter (or more antimatter happens to fall into early black holes by chance due to asymmetry) explaining the matter/antimatter gap. As time goes on and things cool down further, the other forces break out to what we have now. The force ratios / fundamental properties / physical constants of our universe would be due to the ratio between these early protoparticles, due to some factor in the separation of forces, or the geometry of our universe. Maybe the second and third generation of particles has something to do with the original unified or partially unified particles prior to force separation? Again, I totally only know about 50% of what I’m talking about….

[@paulsaulpaul]

Thank you for this. It fills in some holes for this pet model I'm working out in my mind. To explain the mechanism of universal causality. The two fundamental forces in the model being bestowment and reception (to use a Rabbi's words which inspired this one day). And what is transferred between chaotic systems with these forces is a summation of information. In an effort to describe the universe as having arisen from a fundamental first source of information. In a way that gives rise to a "precursor" or "causal" space that is a superset of our spacetime. Where our observed spacetime is like a cross section of this precursor space. In this precursor / causal space is where consciousness exists outside of the bounds of space and time as we know it. With dark matter being a "shadow" of this space where the spiritual machinations there spill-over and no longer zero-sum in the zero-point-energy of our reality, giving rise to the extra gravity we observe as dark matter (basically the souls of the dead, consciousness, and other such spiritual machinations). I hope to take a top-down approach and flip cause and effect to resolve the dualities and paradoxes, retrocausality, "self-emergence" phenomenon with regards to life, etc. A new way of thinking of entropy. A properly unified theory of everything should include a mechanism for consciousness and other supernatural and metaphysical phenomenon that we observe and experience every day (dreams, premonitions, self awareness, instinct, etc.). And the "self-emergence" of life itself without resorting to theories involving a random dice roll on long timelines. Making the universe fundamentally asymmetric, and a summation of information, and having been thought into existence from a single universal source of information (God), and then all of it cascading down from there to give us this spacetime reality as a cross section of a more fundamental causal reality (the heavens). Perhaps symmetry is like an information vacuum that receives information bestowed on it from an asymmetric system. But the model must be consistent at all "levels" like a fractal. Like swirls within swirls in a fluid turbulence. Well, sorry for the off topic ramble. I appreciate the way you present your videos, and you've given me some more things to think about.

[@TheRevAlokSingh]

I loved this. The needle swinging made it make sense.

[@BiswajitBhattacharjee-up8vv]

You have explore common symmetry breaking concept for magnetic property and massless and mass transition. Is it law of conservation of energy or law of Inertia. Excellent efforts to put the leading concept in details but nut she'll without supercomputer math and algorithms. Enjoyed, no nightmare in life.

[@Rationalific]

Thanks for the explanation (even if - and also because - the topic itself is hard to understand)! I just recently subscribed, so here's one more view from a subscriber!

[@karkunow]

Thanks! Reading Baez paper about GUTs not, this helps a lot to understand better the electroweak theory ❤

[@shoutitallloud]

Love physics scientists. "-If we bump two protons hard enough, we'll make fusion and have unlimited energy!" years pass.. "-Ehhh.. fussion? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, sorry, that didn't work actualy. Only for bombs. Boring. But! If we bump two protons hard enough we'll split them and see what they made of!"

[@ericephemetherson3964]

There is a field in every nucleus of an atom called ''beign'' field that controls the decay of the atom and break up of nuclei in chain reaction that can be harnessed to control the velocity (both speed and direction) of the break up of an individual nucleus.

[@alphalunamare]

Are you sure that such localised fields are consistent?

[@karkunow]

Hm, it seems that actually due to the Elitzur's Theorem (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur's_theorem), there couldn't be a spontaneous symmetry breaking involved in the Higgs Mechanism. So the story told in the universities is actually a wrong one. Moreover, even Englert himself emphasized in his Nobel lecture that ”strictly speaking there is no spontaneous symmetry breaking of a local symmetry”.

[@complex314i]

"It's awsome to think about that these fundenental theories come about from something as simple as symmetry breaking." Yea, isn't abstract algebra glorious!

[@TimRobertsen]

Premium content!

[@OVAstronomy]

Thank you - I had a lot of fun making this video! 😂

[@TheUnknown79]

Homo sapiens if unified then humanity stands Forces if unified to fool homo sapiens then homo deus stands

[@larscarter7406]

Not everything is magnetic nor can be made into a magnet right?

[@OVAstronomy]

Not everything can be cooled to become ferromagnetic... however there are other sources of magnetism caused by other spin interactions, e.g. Diamagnetism. Every material has a small diamagnetic contribution, which can be used to make frogs levitate and such. Have a look at this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZ2tpImnmJWsra8

[@larscarter7406]

@@OVAstronomy thanks.

[@kwgm8578]

Physicists are the ultimate optimists, but they cheat when the numbers don't make sense. A concept called Renormalization is one example. Regardless, thanks for the review.

[@TalkingGIJoe]

simple physics is flawed in ways we do not yet understand... therefore everything that stems from those root theories is also fkawed and we are seeing that every day.

[@marcelma]

Fascinating topic and well enough presented to get my attention. However, I do not understand the necessity to chip in visual eye candy that does not contribute anything to understanding. Please cut that out. It significantly diminishes the value of your presentation because it distracts attention. There is no added value in seeing a hand scribbling some random mathematics on a blackboard and there is no added value in watching blue bubbles in random motion when you are talking about gauge fields. Quite the opposite, your audience can not do other than associate those meaningless pictures with the topic! What for??? This way you are unnecessarily messing up peoples minds! If you have no significant visuals, show nothing and concentrate on relevant verbal presentation of the topic. Nobody is interested in your random personal associations or in random stock footage of some library. The key to a good presentation is whether or not the viewer can trust "to take it all in" - and no matter what you are talking about, there is always some background wiggle, that should not be taken in. You admit yourself that you are trying to make accessible some advanced physics. That needs focus on assisting your audience to focus! If you had focussed on your verbal presentation, you might have realized, that you could have slowed down things a bit, to allow your audience time to create their own visuals and meaningful associations. If you want to speed things up, then offer meaningful visuals and associations and don't fall for of every new KZbin fashion. Sorry, if this feedback comes across a bit harsh - I did appreciate your video overall - but I am sick and tired of all that mental pollution with which many KZbinrs powder their presentation, just because it's easily available and just because everyone else seems to do it.

[@sunayvatansever5905]

Read slowly please!!! Electrons does not orbit the nucleus.