Fundamental interaction and the strong interaction. Their magnitude and behaviour vary greatly, as described in the table below. Modern physics attempts to explain every observed physical phenomenon by these fundamental interactions. Moreover, reducing the number of different interaction types is seen as desirable. Two cases in point are the unification of: Both magnitude ("relative strength") and "range", as given in the table, are meaningful only within a rather complex theoretical framework. It should also be noted that the table below lists properties of a conceptual scheme that is still the subject of ongoing research. The modern (perturbative) quantum mechanical view of the
Weak interaction decays rapidly, for example: The Standard Model of particle physics describes the electromagnetic interaction and the weak interaction as two different aspects of a single electroweak interaction. This theory was developed around 1968 by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, and they were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The Higgs mechanism provides an explanation for the presence of three massive gauge bosons (, , , the three carriers of the weak interaction) and the massless photon ("γ", the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction). According to the electroweak theory, at very high energies, the universe