# A basic particle physics question \[Higgs Boson\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 26, 2011, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746 "2011-04-26T05:28:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746/61 "2011-04-28T00:33:41Z")
[quote=“Pasta, post:60, topic:579746”] I’m not sure I understand your statement. Which real particles don’t have to exist for whose mass to be conferred onto which other particles? Maybe I’ve misunderstood Chronos’ post: > [@Chronos](#): > > Pretty much, with one additional quibble: _Real_ Higgs bosons generally don’t exist. But virtual Higgses are all over the place, just like virtual anything else. It was sounding like the field was necessary to confer mass, but the particles not necessarily so. > [@](#): > > It is difficult to create and detect a Higgs, but we know exactly _how_ difficult, in a quantitative way… So that does sound like there is no mystery unless we never find the HB after conducting sifting through all the possibilities. I’ll bet we find it in the last place we look. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746/62 "2011-04-28T00:55:51Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Maybe I’ve misunderstood Chronos’ post. It was sounding like the field was necessary to confer mass, but the particles not necessarily so. Yeah, you read too much into **Chronos** quibble. He was making a side note that “vacuum” means “empty, except for virtual particles popping into and out of existence” and that (virtual) Higgs bosons can do that just like anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746/63 "2011-04-28T11:03:02Z")
> [@dzero](#): > > Thanks for taking the time to answer my post. 🙂 > > I was thinking that virtual particles are a part of structure of space itself. I guess you would call it a guage field (???) if I have understood some of the wonderful posts here. I just remembered, there’s actually an approach that I think does pretty much what you’re thinking about known as Sakharov or [induced gravity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_gravity); in brief, if you start out with an ordinary quantum field theory containing only matter fields, i.e. no gravity, the action of general relativity emerges from the dynamics, in a manner of speaking induced by the quantum fields’ vacuum fluctuations. I’m not sure how directly one can relate this to Casimir effects, though; in particular, Casimir forces aren’t always attractive, which gravity is generally taken to be. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Apparently someone even theorized that HBs travel back in time to avoid detection (I didn’t follow the link, maybe all nonsense). Interestingly, one of the guys who proposed that (Nielsen) is now claiming that the recently-observed CDF bump (at Tevatron, nothing to do with the LHC Higgs rumours) actually [_is_ the Higgs boson](http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4642). So that may tell you how much confidence he has in his own previous work… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746/64 "2011-04-29T18:32:05Z")
Just to keep everybody playing along at home current, there’s a new rumour out saying that the old rumour (of a Higgs detection) was wrong – more specifically, the ATLAS detector has been busily collecting data, and the now larger dataset apparently doesn’t show any significant difference from expected backgrounds, meaning that the earlier ‘detection’ was just a statistical fluke. Or at least that’s what Jester over at Résonaances [says](http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2011/04/atlas-shrugged.html)… ---
**Author:** ![dougrb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dougrb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougrb)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2024, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746/65 "2024-10-17T23:09:21Z")
I’m reading Lisa Randalls “Knocking on Heavens Door” and it mentions “Photons have mass in a superconductor from electrons for the same reason particles have mass from the higgs boson” This is the only link I could find from 12 years ago. But I THINK there’s some kind of equivalence to permeability and permittivity for light that applies to particles and that gives them mass. > [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-basic-particle-physics-question-higgs-boson/579746.md?page=3)