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What are the effects of the nuclear forces on space-time? In other words, I know that enough gravity effects time dilation, and probably a strong enough electromagnetic field would do the same, but what about the stronger forces, gravity is the weakest of all of the forces, but what would a stronger force (the nuclear forces) do? Would you need "less" amount of nuclear force to do the same time dilation as an electromagnetic field would do? How could I calculate that?
Question Date: 2008-03-03
Answer 1:

Plenty of people are devoting their entire careers to constructing a theory that could encompass both gravity and the other fundamental forces (the electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). While "string theory" may eventually provide the solution for this problem, as of now, there is no straightforward answer or simple equation that combines all the forces. But to answer your question, there really is no direct connection between time dilation and the strong force. Let's look a little more carefully why this is.Time dilation is caused by gravity, which is responsible for the curvature of space. For large, massive objects, like planets or galaxies, the significant warping of space can cause time to slow down. However, at the scale of the nucleus (~10-15 meters) where the strong interaction is felt, space is not at all like that. Instead, space is very rough and non-uniform. It does not make sense to think about curving space when talking about such small length scales, so there would not be any time-dilation as we normally think of it.


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