weak nuclear force


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weak nuclear force

n.
The weak force responsible for the beta decay of radioactive nuclei.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

weak nuclear force

(wēk)
A force that causes subatomic particles within the nuclei of atoms to decay or break up into smaller particles and to give off energy as radiation. The weak nuclear force is one of the four basic forces in nature, being weaker than the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force but stronger than gravity. Also called weak interaction.
The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Although scientists believe dark matter is made of either axions - a class of extremely light particles whose existence is predicted by an extension of quantum chromodynamics - or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which are heavy particles that interact with normal matter only through gravity and the weak nuclear force, no such particles have yet been detected.
It naturally includes gravity along with the other fundamental forces (the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, in turn already unified in the electroweak interactions, and the strong nuclear force).
WIMPs are thought to interact with normal matter only via the weak nuclear force and gravity.
The three quantum-based forces are electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactivity) and the strong nuclear force (which glues together the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei).
Their published treatise, "Toward a New Theory of Everything: Subatomic Wormholes, Space-Time, Quantum Entanglement, Relativity, and the Nature of Gravity," copyrighted in 2011 and 2012, and available from www.lulu.com, details an elegant explanation of the true nature of what they claim is the universal effect known as gravity, and integrates it into both current quantum theory and the structure of space-time, while also laying down the path for theoretical physicists to finally complete the Unified Field Theory that will unite the three remaining universal forces (i.e., electro-magnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force) with their postulated universal effect of gravity.
a) Weak Nuclear Force: The influence range of this interaction is 10-16 - 10-17 cm and the process under this force completes relatively in a longer period 10-6-10-8 sec.
These twelve particles interact with each other by means of four different forces: gravity, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force.
It is held together, indeed balanced exquisitely, by the four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear force. Not only does it evolve gradually, but in relatively sudden jumps of organization.
When the theory of supersymmetry was developed in 1973, it solved some key problems in particle physics, such as unifying three forces of nature (electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force), but it left out a fourth force: gravity.
Currently, the hypothetical Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which are believed to interact with normal matter through gravity and the weak nuclear force, are the leading candidates to explain the composition of dark matter, but what class of particles these WIMPs belong to is not yet known.
Neutrinos, electrically neutral particles that sense only gravity and the weak nuclear force, interact so feebly with matter that over 100 trillion zip unimpeded through your body every second.