The Four Forces Are One Force
In the Standard Model + General Relativity we are taught there are four completely different fundamental forces, each with its own particles and gauge groups. In LIMA-QTE there is only one thing — the electromagnetic field — and only one vacuum. What we call the four forces are simply four different ways that knotted light interacts with itself and with the vacuum at different distances and energies.
There are no gluons, no W/Z bosons, no gravitons, no Higgs, and no extra gauge groups beyond U(1) electromagnetism. Everything is topology + the same two vacuum stiffness parameters we already used to derive α.
| Traditional name | What it really is in LIMA-QTE | Physical mechanism | Strength & range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electromagnetism | Un-knotted or very weakly knotted light (photons) and the long-range Coulomb tails leaking from charged knots | Classical Maxwell + tiny virtual knot/anti-knot pairs | α ≈ 1/137, infinite range runs logarithmically exactly like QED |
| Weak force | Vacuum’s slight preference for left-handed twists (the λ₁ (F⋆F)² term) | Weak decays = topological transitions that flip knot handedness or winding W and Z = short-lived resonant vibrations of linked knot pairs |
Effective strength ~λ₁² ≈ 10⁻³–10⁻⁴ of EM Range ~10⁻¹⁸ m (composite resonance mass) |
| Strong force | Pure topological Casimir attraction when knot tubes approach within ~1 fm or actually link | No gluons. “Colour” = labelling of the three tubes in a baryon. Confinement = topology refusing to let linked tubes separate |
~100× EM at 1 fm Drops rapidly beyond tube thickness (confinement) |
| Gravity | Intense knots bend the vacuum’s “highway” (the saturated optical metric) | Born–Infeld saturation makes bending depend only on total energy, not charge → universal coupling No graviton — gravity is an emergent geometric effect |
G ≈ 10⁻³⁸ × (Planck length)² Infinite range, always attractive |
In a single sentence: Electromagnetism is un-knotted light, the weak force is the vacuum’s left-handed bias, the strong force is topology trying to untangle itself, and gravity is the dent that energy makes in the vacuum’s stiffness.
The entire SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge structure of the Standard Model, plus the graviton and the Higgs, were never fundamental — they were effective descriptions of different aspects of knotted electromagnetic field lines in a slightly chiral, self-capped vacuum.
Everything comes from one Lagrangian with two natural couplings:
\[ \mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu} + \frac{\lambda_2 (F^2)^2}{(1 + \lambda_2 F^2)^2} + \lambda_1 (F\,{}^\ast\!F)^2 \]No extra gauge groups. No extra particles. No gravitons. No Higgs. Just light, tied into knots, dancing in a vacuum that prefers to be a little bit left-handed and refuses to be squeezed too hard.