Why is strong interaction inside atoms so strong?

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I was reading something about nuclear fusion, and that it’s so hard to get the right circumstances on earth to make it possible / sustainable (extremely high pressure, temperature). When I went further in the article it stated that the strong interaction inside atoms is 100x stronger than electromagnetic power and 10^40 times stronger than gravity. Why is that, and how is that possible?

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

That’s just how this universe is designed, I can go into the physics but ultimately all I’d be explaining is merely the underlaying cogs (mesons and gluons) that make it happen, because at the bottom of physics there are universal constants that just… are. However, if the the strong force in universe was just slightly weaker, large atoms wouldn’t have formed, so there’s that.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The strong force works on the scale of femptometres 10^(-15)m. It does not have infinite range unlike gravity and electromagnetic. There is no “reason” why it is strong as physicists do not have any idea why the fundamental forces are as they are.

However if it wasn’t very strong, atoms could not form as the protons would repell eachother and we wouldn’t be here. Humans could only exist in a universe where the strong force is strong.

As for gravity and electromagnetic. The strength of attraction between two objects is scaled using big G for gravity and 1/(4π*permeability of free space) for em. G is much smaller than the latter constant