Is there a fifth fundamental force in the universe? What exactly is the torsion field?
newPeople new to the torsion field always want to know how it works. Does it really exist? Why was none of this taught at school? In this article we take a popular-science look at what is proposed as the fifth fundamental force of the universe: the torsion field.
In the universe — in nature, that is — the textbooks currently list four fundamental forces: gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong interaction and the weak interaction.
Gravity, also called universal gravitation, is why we can walk on the ground instead of drifting off into space: the earth pulls us toward it. Legend has it that Newton was hit on the head by an apple and the idea followed. Gravitational acceleration at the earth's surface is 9.81 meters per second squared, which is to say that without the ground holding us up we would fall toward the center of the earth, gaining 9.81 meters per second of speed every second.
Most of what we know about the electromagnetic force was discovered in the nineteenth century, and it built the electrified civilization we live in. Our lives are inseparable from electricity now — televisions, phones, computers, refrigerators, right through to Tesla's electric cars all run on it. Without the electromagnetic force, human life would look completely different.
The strong interaction, also known as the nuclear force, is what binds protons and neutrons together inside the atomic nucleus. In classical physics the atom is the smallest unit that makes up everything around us — the oxygen atoms in the air, the iron atoms in a kitchen knife, and so on. Conventional nuclear power generates electricity from the heat released when atoms split. Without the strong interaction, the world we know would not exist at all, because every atom would fly apart into loose protons and neutrons.
The weak interaction is more involved. Physicists found it in the force produced when an atomic nucleus undergoes beta decay and emits an electron. It shares a common origin with the electromagnetic force but is far weaker. If you would like to go deeper, see the article What Is the Weak Interaction Good For?
Ranked by relative strength, the strong interaction comes first, followed by the electromagnetic force, then the weak interaction, then gravity. Take the strong interaction as 1: the electromagnetic force is between 1/20 and 1/60 of it, the weak interaction is 10-13 of it, and gravity is 10-39 of it. Put in terms of weight, if you set gravity — the weakest of the four — at 1 kilogram, the weak interaction weighs about as much as 17 earths, the electromagnetic force about 8 trillion earths, and the strong interaction 167 trillion earths. Quite a spread.
All of that background is here to set up the torsion field, proposed as nature's fifth force. It is much smaller again than gravity, the weakest of the four. How much smaller? On the order of 10-27 of gravity. In the same terms as before: set the torsion force at 1 kilogram and gravity weighs about 1,678 earths — never mind the weak interaction, the electromagnetic force or the strong interaction.
Because the torsion field is so faint next to the other four, it is extremely difficult to measure with instruments, which is why the textbooks pass over it. It is also why, when Einstein set out general relativity in 1915, he knew that the presence of mass curves spacetime but, to keep the mathematics tractable, simply set the torsion — the twisting of spacetime — to zero. It was not until 1922 that the French mathematician and physicist Élie Joseph Cartan added the spin angular momentum of torsion back into general relativity, filling out the theory. Russian scientists began studying torsion in earnest from the 1960s onward.
At this point you may reasonably ask: if the torsion force is that weak, why should we care about it?
The answer is that in the course of their experiments, Russian scientists reported a set of unusual physical properties: the torsion field is not shielded by ordinary matter, and it appears to travel through spacetime, propagating forward in time and backward in time alike — hinting that it may exceed the speed of light.
In 2013, Prof. Si-Chen Lee, former President of National Taiwan University, and his doctoral student Dr. Wei-Chieh Liang published a paper [1] in the well-known physics journal Physical Review D, arguing on theoretical grounds that although the torsion field produced by particle spin is very weak, coupling it to large-scale rotation would generate a torsion field large enough to be detected. Between 2013 and 2016, Aqive co-founders Prof. Si-Chen Lee and Dr. Hsiung-Kuang Tsai ran experiments on the qi field of crystals; the results were consistent with the torsion field properties described by the Russian researchers, which led them to conclude that the qi field produced by crystals is the torsion field [2].
Between 2016 and 2019, in the "Human Potential" research project he ran at National Taiwan University, Prof. Si-Chen Lee also found that 15% to 20% of the participants reported being able to sense the torsion field, and 5% reported sensing an effect on their own meridians. That people can perceive the torsion field at all is remarkable, and it suggests that even though the effect is physically very faint, with a suitable amplification mechanism it can produce something people notice — which is not to be brushed aside.
Alongside the experiments using human perception, between 2018 and 2020 Prof. Ren Quan-Sheng of Peking University reported that the fourth phase of water — water in a liquid-crystal state — can be used to detect the presence of a torsion field.
By now you should have a firmer grasp of what the torsion field is. With researchers around the world at work on it, the mystery is slowly being lifted. Just as the discovery of the electromagnetic force in the nineteenth century built the modern civilization we live in, Prof. Si-Chen Lee has offered a prediction of his own: "The torsion field is humanity's next step. The torsion civilization of the twenty-first century is about to begin."
References:
[1] W. C. Liang and S. C. Lee, “Vorticity, Gyroscopic Precession, and Spin-curvature Force”, Phys. Rev. D. 87, 044024 (2013).
[2] S. C. Lee, H. K. Tsai, W. C. Liang, “The Physical Nature of the Qi Field of Crystals: The Torsion Field”, Buddhism and Science, 2016; 2: pp. 59-72.
