# Protons and Electrons **URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protons-and-electrons/1024675 **Category:** Factual Questions **Created:** [November 7, 2025, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protons-and-electrons/1024675 "2025-11-07T20:14:30Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 18
### Author: ![dougrb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dougrb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougrb) #### Post date: [November 8, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protons-and-electrons/1024675/18 "2025-11-08T00:50:56Z")
@pasta has an explanation for how symmetry breaking causes forces [here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-questions-related-to-particle-physics-and-cosmology-higgs-field-dark-energy-and-more/1023696/6)… I don’t understand it. Here’s an excerpt > This is true for all the fundamental forces in the Standard Model. The electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces are not put into the theory, but rather they emerge from it in an elegant fashion by requiring certain symmetries of nature to be present. The relevant symmetries are somewhat subtle and mathematical in their description, but in their own way they are simple. These are known as “gauge symmetries”. These gauge symmetries insist that the laws of nature should be unchanged if you do a certain type of mathematical operation to the fields. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protons-and-electrons/1024675)._