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Article

Unified theory of elementary‐particle forces

SEP 01, 1980
At sufficiently small distances, perhaps less than 10−29cm, the weak, electromagnetic, and strong interactions appear to be no more than different components of the same fundamental force.
Howard Georgi
Sheldon L. Glashow

The notion of what are the “elementary” or structureless constituents of matter keeps changing as we are able to probe smaller and smaller distances with higher and higher energies. As long as we were limited by the energy available in chemical processes, the elementary particles were atoms; later they were protons, neutrons and electrons; currently we can smash matter into pieces sufficiently fine that quarks and leptons appear to be the elementary consituents of matter.

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More about the authors

Howard Georgi, Harvard University.

Sheldon L. Glashow, Harvard University.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 33, Number 9

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