• Question: What force would you be able to live without

    Asked by Charlie to Sarah, Steven, Lidunka, Jillian, Connor on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 17 Jun 2015:


      There are four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

      Gravity holds our Solar System together and is the reason our planet formed in the first place. If gravity had never existed, we wouldn’t exist! But we know that humans can go to space, so we are in fact able to survive without gravity, though it does weak our bodies very quickly.

      Electromagnetism is responsible for almost everything you see around you – it gives us light, electricity, stops us falling through our chairs and holds complex molecules together that form our bodies. So I don’t think we could live without that!

      The strong and weak nuclear forces only really exist inside the heart of atoms, so they’re not ones we notice much. You might think we could get rid of these too, but in fact these forces are the reason the core of the Sun burns and gives off energy as heat and light. Without these forces, we’d have no Sun, no stars, no light – we wouldn’t even have atoms, and the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. So we couldn’t live without these either!

    • Photo: Sarah Beasley

      Sarah Beasley answered on 17 Jun 2015:


      I don’t think we could live without any of the four fundamental types of force! But just for fun, let’s say gravity. It’d be fun floating around for a while 🙂

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