Weak and Strong Force
Years of Discovery: 1937 and 1983
What Is It? The last two of the four fundamental physics forces of nature.
Who Discovered It? Carlo Rubbia (weak force) and Hideki Yukawa
(strong force)
Why Is This One of the 100 Greatest?
For several centuries scientists thought that gravity and electromagnetic forces governed the universe. Then twentieth-century physicists found atomic nuclei composed of
positively charged protons. Why didn’t they fly apart since positive electrical forces repel
each other? Further, why did some atoms naturally radioactively decay while others did
not?
Many physicists proposed that two new forces (weak and strong) must exist. In 1935,
Hideki Yukawa discovered the strong force. It was not until 1983 that Carlo Rubbia discovered the two particles that defined the weak force.
These discoveries completed our understanding of the four forces that govern the microscopic quantum world and direct whole clusters of galaxies. The weak and strong forces
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