Force force. Here the strong force acts indirectly, transmitted as gluons, which form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, which classically transmit the nuclear force (see this topic for more). The failure of many searches for free quarks has shown that the elementary particles affected are not directly observable. This phenomenon is called color confinement. The weak force is due to the exchange of the heavy W and Z bosons. Its most familiar effect is beta decay (of neutrons in atomic nuclei) and the associated radioactivity. The word "weak" derives from the fact that the field strength is some
Technicolor (physics) "M", and the coupling of quarks and leptons to the new particles must be suppressed relative to their coupling to the gauge bosons. This is the case with technicolor, so long as the lightest technivector mesons, "ρ" and "a", are heavier than 200–300 GeV. The "S"-parameter is sensitive to all new physics at the TeV scale, while "T" is a measure of weak-isospin breaking effects. The "U"-parameter is generally not useful; most new-physics theories, including technicolor theories, give negligible contributions to it. The "S" and "T"-parameters are determined by global fit to experimental data including "Z"-pole data from LEP at