Force Carriers of Modern Physics without Meaning

 The Standard Model SM as the crown jewel of modern physics divides the World into:

• matter particles (fermions)
• force carriers (bosons) of different forms:
• photons for electromagnetic force
• W and Z bosons for weak nuclear force
• gluons for strong nuclear force 
• (gravitons for gravitational force, hypothetical not detected)  

A major short-coming is that SM does not describe gravitation, because the graviton as force carrier has not been identified/detected, while the other force carriers are claimed to have been detected in particle accelerators. 

ChatGPT admits that the whole idea of force carrier or mediator of force by exchange of bosons, may be wrong in the sense that this is not how physics really works. The fact that the idea does not work for gravitation, may indicate that it is an illusion that it works for the electromagnetic and weak/strong forces. Another troubling aspect is that mediation by force carriers come with questions about finite speed of delivery, since infinite speed is hard to imagine. 

Classical physics does not include any concept of force carrier, because it has no role to play. Forces in classical physics can be viewed to come in two forms:

• Potential forces as spatial gradients of potentials instantly delivered locally. Gravitational and electro-magnetic forces are derived this way from electro-magnetic and gravitational potentials. 
• Contact forces also instantly delivered locally in space. Elastic forces in an elastic solid have this form. 

These forces need no force carriers since forces act locally in space without time delay, and so there is no issue with action at distance asking for some form of force carrier. It is thus possible to view the apparent instant action at distance of gravitational force as a misconception since the force is in fact delivered locally by a potential with instant delivery. This is the theme of many posts.

It is thus possible to describe electro-magnetic and gravitational forces without force carriers and then circumvent the apparently unsolvable problem of instant action at distance deeply troubling SM. 

RealNucleus presents a model of an atomic nucleus in terms of only electro-magnetic force. 

Summary:

The fundamental component of SM of force carrier raises several questions:

• How is the force carried and by what?
• How quick is the delivery of force over distance?
• Why is there no force carrier for gravitation?
• How is electro-magnetic force carried by photons? 

Coupled with the fact that there may be no need of force carrier at all, since force is always delivered locally instantly, like no need of surface mail when there is instant email, it may seem better to eliminate it from the discussion altogether as only a novelty without lasting value invented by a modern physics in desperate need to deliver new physics. 

18th century Stangenkunst (system of linked rods) as carrier of mechanical force over long distance.

PS ChatGPT informs us: 

• The concept of force carriers was introduced out of necessity when physicists tried to extend classical ideas to the quantum world. It arose to explain how particles interact in a way consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity.
• The carriers of the electromagnetic force are virtual photons which are internal lines in Feynman diagrams. The were introduced to get around the contradiction between instant-action-at-distance and special relativity, which however does not arise since instant-action-at-distance has no role to play as we saw above.

There is thus no need of any virtual photons and so we do not have to worry about the physical meaning of lines in a Feynman diagram. The basic idea of RealQM is that there is no conceptual difference between macroscopic and microscopic physics, that is that the quantum world is not fundamentally different from the world we live in. If this is indeed the way things are, it will make the atomic world easier to understand and then to manipulate.