What makes photons the only visible force carriers? 🤔 #photons #forcecarriers #visibility
Understanding the Role of Photons
– Photons are unique force carriers of electromagnetic interactions
– They are responsible for carrying light and other electromagnetic waves
Clarity on Visibility of Photons
– Photons are considered “visible” because they interact with our eyes and are detected as light
– Other force carriers like gluons or W and Z bosons are not “visible” in the same way
– This visibility is crucial for studying and understanding electromagnetic forces
Exploring the Science Behind Photons
– Photons have zero rest mass, allowing them to travel at the speed of light
– Their dual nature as particles and waves adds to their visibility in electromagnetic interactions
– Understanding photons can lead to breakthroughs in technology and physics
In conclusion, photons stand out as the only visible force carriers due to their unique properties and interactions with light. #science #electromagnetism #physics 🌟
>Is it because the electromagnetic force has an infinite range, whereas the other two are limited to the subatomic range?
Yes, though the strong and weak forces ate short-ranged for different reasons. The strong force is short-ranged because of confinement. The weak force is short-ranged because the W/Z bosons are heavy and so they decay rapidly.
Bonus answer: There would be different particles associated with the unified forces. For example, in electroweak theory above the symmetry breaking scale, the relevant particles include a mixture of the Z and photon.
the nuclear forces happen in far too small distances to be observed and exist in every atom, so it is unlikely that any organ that could detect it would have developed.
Magnetism, Gravity and Light are the only 3 moving distances large enough for us to matter. Gravitons have not been proven or measured yet, so it is unlikely that our biology would have been first here.
Magnetism can’t be detected by humans, but various animals have evolved organs to detect it. Humans just haven’t.
Meanwhile, Light is on a comparatively straight trajectory, actively hitting your eyes, allowing your eyes to detect the impact. That’s mechanically pretty easy to measure.
So I’d argue that the particle wave duality of light is the reason why it is easier to measure and experience than other force carriers.
>because the electromagnetic force has an infinite range, whereas the other two are limited to the subatomic range?
Yes and no. Photons are the only force carrier we can see, because it is the only force carrier our eyes evolved to detect. Our eyes evolved to detect photons because there is a meaningful enough amount of photons around to drive natural selection.
Being able to detect photons allowed early organisms to detect sources of energy at a distance which is a very useful adaptive trait. Being able to detect strong and weak forces would not be as useful since, as you mentioned, they don’t travel very far. The only ones we’d realistically detect would be the ones from our own bodies.
I take the natural selection route because you could just as easily ask why we can only see photons of a certain range of wavelengths, and the answer is the same. We developed specialized cells to accurately detect those photons because it was useful to do so, and it increased our reproductive fitness. Other sensory adaptations could have shown up at some point (not all animals have the same visible range as us) but did not increase reproductive fitness enough to become a ubiquitous feature.
Adding onto these other replies, force carrier photons and ordinary photons are not the same. Force carrier photons are virtual. They’re transient quantized interactions of the underlying electromagnetic field, don’t need to follow on-shell relations* (such as e=mc2 +(pc)2), can therefore have non-ordinary masses, cannot be detected, and may not even be meaningfully real beyond a way to mathematically visualize the field itself.
Real photons are what you can actually see and detect. They follow the einstein relation and are generally what you’d expect. These aren’t what’s physically meditating the force (or you’d go blind every time you look at a magnet). That would be the field itself, expressed mathematically using virtual photon interactions. They’re not the same thing.
*The closer a virtual particle’s properties are to its real counterpart, the longer it is allowed to ‘exist’, so to speak.