The electromagnetic coupling becomes stronger at shorter distances or higher momentum transfer, because electron-positron pairs have less chance to shield the “bare” charge; for the strong force the opposite effect occurs because while quark-antiquark pairs do shield color at large distances, the bosons of the field, the gluons, are also colored and they shield color at shorter distances or higher momentum transfer!  Remember QΔr = ℏc.

When the 1/(mass)² factor that makes the weak force appear so weak is factored off, in the limit as the momentum transfer goes to zero, the “true” weak α_W is about 1/30, 4.5 times stronger than α.


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