Gravity is explained in general relativity as curved spacetime. Can the other forces (electromagnetic and weak/strong nuclear) also be explained by this?
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4$\begingroup$ This question does not show any research effort. $\endgroup$– Alfred CentauriSep 13, 2015 at 3:24
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$\begingroup$ As a starting point, gravity is not a force. In Newtonian mechanics it's an acceleration, in general relativity it is described by the curvature of spacetime. Neither can be used to describe the other forces. $\endgroup$– CuriousOneSep 13, 2015 at 3:57
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1$\begingroup$ Why the downvotes? Yes, this is a duplicate, but without knowing about Yang-Mills forces the duplicate is not all obvious and hard to find. $\endgroup$– John RennieSep 13, 2015 at 4:49
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1$\begingroup$ Hi rtpax. Surprisingly the answer is yes - see the duplicate question I've linked. More precisely, all forces can be expressed in terms of curvature, though the curvature is not of spacetime but of an object called a connection. $\endgroup$– John RennieSep 13, 2015 at 4:51
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Gravity is explained in general relativity as curved spacetime. Can the other forces (electromagnetic and weak/strong nuclear) also be explained by this?
The answer is no, General Relativity describes the behavior under gravity only. The other three forces, weak , strong and electromagnetic are described by virtual exchanges between elementary particles with quantization and second quantization .
If one eliminates the "curved" part of the question, string theory and its offshoots are attempting to describe all four forces by the behavior of fundamental one dimensional strings in at least 10 dimensions, of which 9 (or more for higher dimensions) are space dimensions. Thus one can say that the effort is to explain all forces by the quantized behavior of spacetime .
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$\begingroup$ @0celo7 You are correct, I don't know why I wrote "two". I edited $\endgroup$– anna vSep 13, 2015 at 14:10
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$\begingroup$ Aren't forces just something that causes acceleration? Now if curvature can be used to cause acceleration why is it not the case for the other forces? $\endgroup$ Jul 2, 2020 at 12:32
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$\begingroup$ @user43470 The weak and strong manifest only at the micro level of partilcels atoms and molecules, i.e. follow quantum mechanics. When gravity is quantized the forces will be described in a univorm way ( classcial electromagnetism also is emergent from the quantized world) $\endgroup$– anna vJul 2, 2020 at 17:17
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Nope. Till now, GR does not explain any other forces and conventional QFT explains all forces except GR. That's why people are trying to connect these two theories by means of String theory, Twistor theory..........etc.
