Image credit: Contemporary Physics Education Project / DOE / NSF / LBNL, via http://cpepweb.org/.

What is the strongest force in the Universe?

The answer depends on what scales you’re looking at.

“The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.” -Swami Vivekananda

When it comes to the fundamental laws of nature, we can break everything down into four forces that are at the core of everything in the Universe:

1. The strong nuclear force: the force responsible for holding atomic nuclei and individual protons and neutrons together.
2. The electromagnetic force: the force that attracts and repels charged particles, binds atoms together into molecules and life, and causes electric current, among other things.
3. The weak nuclear force: the force responsible for some types of radioactive decay and the transmutation of heavy, unstable fundamental particles into lighter ones.
4. And gravity: the force that bind the Earth, the Solar System and the stars and galaxies together.

The four fundamental forces in our Universe. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Kvr.lohith, under a c.c.a.-by-s.a.-4.0 international license.

Depending on how you look at it, each force has a scale and a circumstance under which it shines above all others.