The fifth force

Since inception, the human mind has continually stared at the nature of the things that encircles its existence. With time it has made various breakthroughs and evolved from it. These breakthroughs come in all shapes and sizes. Lately, the discovery of a new force made headings in many publication and articles. The fifth force can be considered a major breakthrough. But first, let us understand what makes this discovery so important. The scientists have a book that they use to explain everything that surrounds us or the nature of the things that surrounds us. This book in the simple sense describes the ingredients that make up our universe. The book is called the standard model of particle physics. This model has two categories, fermions and bosons. Fermions are the elementary particles that make up matter. They are further divided into quarks and leptons. Just like atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons similarly protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and electrons falls under leptons. Now bosons are particles that result in four fundamental forces. Bosons are divided into photons, gluons, W and Z bosons and a hypothetical particle graviton. Each of them is responsible for the forces that we feel around us. The electromagnetic force exists because of photons, the strong nuclear force exists due to gluons that are responsible for keeping the atoms intact, and the weak nuclear force is responsible for atomic decay and exists due to W and Z bosons. The fourth force called gravitation is believed to exist due to a hypothetical particle called graviton. When some scientists observed the decaying of beryllium 8, it did not produce the expected light emission and indicated that a fifth force or a particle may be present that was hidden till now. This particle is named X17 and is believed to be responsible for the fifth force. The scientists are eager to unveil the mystery of the fifth force because they hope this might eventually provide an answer to the existence of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matters are those matters that do not radiate nor reflect any light and hence remains invisible. Now, why are they interesting? Well, everything that you can see or touch or feel is made up of normal matters like the mountains, rivers, trees, sun, planets and so on. But like galaxies, the stars are also grouped in clusters. The net force that is required to keep all the stars of a galaxy in cluster cannot be fulfilled only by the normal matters. That is why scientists believe that there are other matters that contribute to the net force. These other matters are named as dark matter. Similarly, the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate rather than a constant speed. The energy that is providing the extra force in the acceleration is called dark energy. The fifth force is still a controversial topic until now but with time the evolution of this study will be a topic to keep one's eyes peeled.