Physicist: Isn’t that weird? The name “quantum mechanics” comes
from the fact that, at its most base, quantum mechanics requires
all particles and energies to come in discrete (one might say
“quantized”) packets. At some point a bunch of physicists
starting asking awkward questions like; the matter is quantized,
the energy is exchanged in quantized packets, so why do we
assume the force is smooth and continuous? Compounding this
awkward line of questioning was the fact that photons were
already known to carry electromagnetic force. Literally, photons
are little oscillating bits of electric and magnetic fields,
which is exactly what the electric and magnetic forces are. So
the next obvious question was “do the other forces have ‘force
carriers‘?” You’re damn right they do. Photons for
electromagnetism, W and Z bosons for the nuclear weak force, and
gluons for the nuclear strong force. There’s every force but
gravity! Each of the carriers were predicted by the (then new)
study of “quantum field theory”, and hav