Talk:Fifth force

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Would forces such as the Casimir effect fall under this heading? Btyner 21:08, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. Traditionally only forces that "couples to" (are proportional tp) mass-energy are considered are counted as "difth force". The Casimir effect is an important difficuly in the short range experiments looking for a fifth force. --Pjacobi 22:34, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@Btyner: The Casimir effect is a side effect of the electromagnetic force, caused by the creation of virtual particle pairs (vacuum fluctuations) in empty space due to the Uncertainty principle. It is not a new fundamental force. 2601:601:447E:1720:C086:C003:3E7D:98DF (talk) 20:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh

I dunno which is worse - how much space has been devoted here to a shaky theory, or insane amount of jargon used to describe it. This article is borderline unreadable for a layman. 24.29.9.211 (talk) 09:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)Ubiquitousnewt[reply]

Experimental evidence?

Randell Mills has published a paper that purportedly describes experimental confirmation of his theory regarding the fifth force anti-gravitational effect of so-called hyperbolic electrons. The experimental setup seems fairly straight forward - create hyperbolic electrons by shooting a beam of free electrons of the correct energy through a perpendicular beam of neutral atoms (e.g. He, Ne, Ar, etc.). He then measures the upward (anti-gravitational) deflection of the electrons by the ratio of current densities at two grounded electrode plates, one above and one below the electron beam, both positioned about 100mm behind the atomic beam. He varies the electron energy and sees deflectional peaks that correspond, roughly, to quantum modes predicted by his theory. This seems like a pretty interesting phenomena - particularly because it should be easy to replicate. Anyone else think this is worth mentioning on this page? GenMan2000 01:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Martin Nieto (of the Greenland experiment) suggested such an experiment as a means of testing the Fifth Force over metre length scales. I know he was trying to get an experiment together; unfortunately I did not hear what became of it (I am not a physicist; my interest was in measuring ice thickness). --APRCooper (talk) 16:20, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Greenland experiment

I have added information about the Greenland experiment to determine Big G. I also reformatted the references to the conventional standard. I may not have correctly located the references in the text.

An aside, that would violate NPOV and so isn't for the main article, but the Greenland experiment, although it COULD be explained by geological bodies, requires such an extreme geology that it seems unlikely! --APRCooper (talk) 16:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lede change

rm "and physicists now believe that there is no evidence for a fifth force" since SFAIK this is actually the opposite of the current situation. Which of the following does the editor that placed that deny: the observed accelerating expansion of the universe or that a force is required to explain this acceleration? Lycurgus (talk) 18:30, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Malware Link Removal

--Gary Dee 18:14, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New article

Nature magazine May 25, 2016, Has a Hungarian Physics Lab Found a Fifth Force of Nature? Some theorists say a radioactive decay anomaly could imply a fundamental new force – Tomruen (talk) 18:20, May 25, 2016

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Extra dimensions

What is the point of bringing up the submarine experiments, if we don't get informed of the results? Are we supposed to assume "similar experiments" necessarily produced similar results? – 24.213.20.170 (talk) 01:12, July 26, 2019 (UTC)

Issues with this page: incorrect citations and WP:fringe citations

In the physics literature -- scientific literature -- the discussion about "fifth force" primarily refer to Ephraim Fischbach's work summarized in

The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force Discovery, Pursuit, and Justification in Modern Physics By Allan Franklin, Ephraim Fischbach

However the weight of the article here is towards speculations. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:41, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article about the "Fifth force" or additional hypothetical forces beyond 4?

It seems to me our edits are conflicting on this article because we don't seem to agree on the topic.

There is a named and notable thing called the "Fifth force", eg:

"The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force Discovery, Pursuit, and Justification in Modern Physics By Allan Franklin, Ephraim Fischbach".

Physicist are forever proposing more forces to describe measurement errors, er "anomalies".

In my opinion we should devote this article to topic #1 and clearly in the intro point and hatnotes point to other articles on broader topic #2, and we could have section devoted to specific sources using the word "fifth force" but not meaning the Fifth force with links to other article. We should not be conflating the two concepts throughout the article.

@Chetvorno @ReyHahn @24.19.113.134 Johnjbarton (talk) 15:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I have not followed the edit history. Fifth force refers to an additional fundamental force. What else is in conflict here?--ReyHahn (talk) 15:27, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The conflict is that the name became associated with one specific additional fundamental force per the sources.

The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force Discovery, Pursuit, and Justification in Modern Physics https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-28412-5
The Rise of the “Fifth Force” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-5334-8_5

If we include these sources, and we should, then their description of the topic will necessarily differ from other sources because they are talking about different things. I think we should spell this out in the article. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:47, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't read these sources due to the paywall, but from looking at other sources [1], [2] it does seem like recent use of the term "fifth force" has focused, as you say, on the 1986 Fischbach proposal of an "antigravity" found from anomalies in gravimetric experiments, which have now been largely debunked [3]. I'd be fine with the article saying that's the most prominent recent theory.

However the article should cover all "fifth force" theories, and there have been many more:

The 2021 Fermilab muon g-2 anomaly has raised suggestions that it is due to a fifth force [4], [5]
An anomaly of beryllium decay found in 2016 at Brookhaven was interpreted as a new vector boson representing a new force of nature [6], [7], [8]
A 1964 New York Times article [9] says that the 1964 discovery of CP violation in kaon decay by Cronin and Fitch was suggested to be caused by a fifth force. The Fischbach theory mentions CP violation [10] so maybe this was also interpreted as evidence for that theory, I don't know enough to tell.
A Powerpoint presentation at Vanderbilt [11] says some theorize dark matter is caused by new bosons
Here's a Physics Review paper on the history of the search for new particles outside the Standard Model representing new forces [12]

It seems like almost any new physics discovery can be interpreted as evidence of a fifth force. So I think that describing fifth force theories in general as "obsolete", as the previous lead did, is clearly premature. --Chetvorno^TALK 20:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I broadly agree, one point we diverge:

the article should cover all "fifth force" theories

I don't think we need to make this a goal in the sense of being comprehensive. We should only include content with reliable secondary review that specifically discuss "fifth force". We should try to avoid recreating another "Alternatives" article.

I changed the intro to match my proposed two-track viewpoint. I deleted the examples because as you say there are many diverse theories. Maybe we can find a secondary source suggesting examples as characteristic of the topic. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:01, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all for addressing these issues. I have little to chime in about, but I thought I'd archive the "examples" text here, per per WP:Text move#Moving to talk pages in case anyone decides to revisit or rework it.

Some speculative theories have proposed a '''fifth force''' to explain various anomalous observations that do not fit existing theories. The specific characteristics of a putative fifth force depend on which hypothesis is being advanced. For example, one postulated a weak force with roughly the strength of gravity—that is, much weaker than [[electromagnetism]] and the [[strong nuclear force|nuclear forces]]—but with a range of anywhere from less than a millimeter to cosmological scales. Other proposals suggested a new weak force mediated by [[W′ and Z′ bosons]], or that a form of [[dark energy]] called [[quintessence (physics)|quintessence]] could be a fifth force. No evidence to support these models has been found.

24.19.113.134 (talk) 02:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]