Abstract
In 1979, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Sheldon Glashow (b. 1932), Abdus Salam (1926–1996), and Steven Weinberg (b. 1933), for formulating a theory which unified the electromagnetic and weak interactions. By then, there was already enough experimental evidence concerning the predictions of the theoretical model they had built. As a coincidence, in 1979 was the centennial of the death of James Clerk Maxwell, who formulated a theory that clearly demonstrated the unified character of electric and magnetic phenomena.
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Notes
- 1.
The fact that massless particles are associated with a broken global symmetry was found in 1960 by Yoichiro Nambu (1921–2015) in the context of the Bardeen–Cooper–Schiffer (BCS) superconductivity mechanism. The idea was developed and elucidated by Jeffrey Goldstone (b. 1933). Thus, it is more proper to call them Nambu–Goldstone bosons.
- 2.
Very often this mechanism has simply been referred to as the Higgs mechanism.
- 3.
It is illuminating to think that, if a strong interaction process takes place on a given time scale in 1 s, then a weak interaction process takes place in one million years!
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Chaichian, M., Perez Rojas, H., Tureanu, A. (2021). Unification of the Forces of Nature. In: Basic Concepts in Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62313-8_11
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