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I'm trying to develop a story with super-humans where powers are evoked through the person's emotion during the trigger. I would like to give the lead the power over electromagnetism. Now, I was wondering how to include the fundamental forces as powers and their applications. Strong nuclear force being the strongest and gravity being the weakest, I wanted to applications for these forces in correspondence to their actual strengths. Meaning that strong nuclear force should be able to negatively affect all other three(to a certain extent; that may not be how they actually interact). I don't have the greatest grasp regarding these concepts and wanted to improve on my story building.

Assumptions would be that the laws of physics hold true as much as possible. There are limits to each power and the powers don't work at a planetary scale.

P.S. I'm new to the forum so I don't know how things work. So, if there's an issue with the question let me know and I will try to edit it and republish the query.

GenuinelyLethargic
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    There have been questions along these lines before. Such as https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/163001/what-would-powers-based-on-the-weak-force-look-like and https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/163542/what-would-powers-based-of-the-strong-force-look-like And probably others. It's worthwhile to do some searching to see if the ideas you're looking for are already out there. – TheUndeadFish Apr 04 '21 at 20:08
  • What I mostly want to know is how these abilities might work in their actual order - strong nuclear negatively impacts electromagnetic which negatively impacts weak nuclear which similarly impacts gravitational. All these effects under a limit meaning that strong nuclear can't completely negate the other three and so on.

    Thanks for the links though

     – GenuinelyLethargic Apr 04 '21 at 20:30
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    Ironically, since the actual day-to-day observable effects of these forces tend in the opposite direction, it may be more in the realm on anti-effects. Mr. Strong Nuclear can't actually DO anything on a macro scale (short of splitting the atom and vaporizing himself), but cancels out the effects of other abilities. The electromagnetic woman would have a fair set of abilities, and cancels out lesser heroes. Weak nuclear boy (? radiation/decay powers, but cancels gravitation). Gravity girl can toss giant things, but is countered by everyone else. – DWKraus Apr 04 '21 at 20:38
  • Some combine electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces into an electroweak force https://www.britannica.com/science/electroweak-theory – DWKraus Apr 04 '21 at 20:42
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    Getting powers out of strong nuclear forces is kind of quarky, To make it stick, you have to get gluon it. ;) – DWKraus Apr 04 '21 at 20:48
  • I'll have to read further to streamline what set of abilities of one power may negate abilities of a different power. Really appreciate the input. Thanks. – GenuinelyLethargic Apr 04 '21 at 20:55
  • @DWKraus that might make a good story premise actually. Four super-powered individuals allying themselves against a common foe out of necessity, each with their own morally ambiguous goals and each with their own shards of morality and goodness on top of the bad, all keeping one another in check. – BMF Apr 04 '21 at 21:39
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    The strong nuclear force is the strongest, but it is also the most short ranged; it vanishes at ranges of 5 fm (femtometers!) or so. (For comparison, the wavelength of green light is about 500,000,000 fm.) The electromagnetic force is the only one which is both reasonably strong and reasonably long ranged. Gravitation is the weakest, but is also has the longest range by very far. – AlexP Apr 04 '21 at 22:10
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    Gravity abilities are also largely what is done with biotics in Mass Effect. Probably the best suggestion is that they manipulate dark matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6MRcNzJ56I – Adam Reynolds Apr 04 '21 at 22:59
  • @DWKraus , I see what you did there! I'm surprised your humorous comment has survived though. – Len Apr 05 '21 at 01:21

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If I'm not mistaken, the strength of a force has to do with how much effort it takes to overcome its effect, e.g. it takes much more to unbind gluon-tethered quarks than it does to unbind gravitationally tethered particles generally (outside of black holes). That's probably not perfectly accurate at all so see this essay for a better recap/analysis.

Anyway, for story purposes, we might still want to translate our talk of force strength into the indicated ranking. Since the forces generally have to do with binding and unbinding of mass/energy systems, the strong-force character would be able to hold objects together in defiance of electromagnetic repulsion, weak decay, or gravitational attraction. The electromagnetic character could deter weak decay and gravity, the weak-force character could manipulate decay and resist gravity, and lastly the gravity character could manipulate gravity but be vulnerable to interruption by characters manipulating the stronger forces.

Or something along these lines.

Kristian Berry
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