The 5th Force

In High School Physics, we learned that there are four Fundamental Forces in Science: Gravity, Strong Interaction, Weak Interaction, and Electromagnetism.  But it hasn't always been that way.

In 1686, scientists (or "Natural Philosophers," as they were called then) knew nothing of any of these.  It was just a fact of life that we could only jump so high, and would always come back down.  Isaac Newton changed it all the next year, publishing his theory of Universal Gravitation, and opening the floodgates for the study of gravity that culminated in Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

Like Gravity, Electricity and Magnetism have been used for thousands of years but misunderstood (and kept separate) until 1873.  The Strong & Weak forces, which work only between subatomic particles, weren't even imagined until the 20th century!

We're slowly learning more and more about how these work - some we know more than others.  Electromagnetism exerts force via photons, gluons are the particles that create the bonds of the Strong force, and "intermediate vector bosons" cause the Weak force to operate.  But Gravity, the first of the four forces to be truly understood,  is still a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma.

So what?

I suspect that as the years go by, we'll discover more and more forces that bring things together, especially when it comes to Life itself.

After all, what is the particle that attracts one human being to another?  What is it that makes a person put themselves into harm's way to help someone else?  What makes our chests ache when we break a deep relationship?  What is the "electricity" that zaps you when a loved one touches your skin?


What I'm asking is this: what if we're not done learning all that the Universe has to offer?  What if the world's religions know something Science does not?  What if our explanations (and understanding) of God is at the same level as Newton's explanations (and understanding) of Gravity?