I can answer this question by asking and answering another question: where is the photon? Is it part of the proton? No. Is it part of the neutron or electron? No. Is it hanging out somewhere else in the atom? No. Photons are not conserved. The universe is filled with an undulating field called the electromagnetic field, and photons are ripples in that field. When you disturb the electromagnetic field (say, by accelerating an electron), the field wiggles, generating photons. Similarly, the universe is filled with a field called the Higgs field. Higgs bosons are ripples in the Higgs field. When you disturb the Higgs field with enough energy (say, by colliding protons at 8 TeV) the field can wiggle, creating a Higgs boson.
In the Standard Model there is the electroweak field, the chromodynamic field, the gravitational field, and the Higgs field.
No. Massive particles are massive because they interact with the Higgs field strongly. The Higgs boson itself has nothing to do with it. The Higgs boson is a ripple in the Higgs field. The Higgs field is what gives particles mass. They get that mass by interacting with the Higgs field. The stronger they interact with it, the higher their mass.
Nope. The bottle of Evian would be the exact same as before. The Higgs bosons would, however, rapidly decay into a spray of radiation that might harm you.
Err, no. Because of its elusiveness someone once called it “that goddamn particle” which somehow has been mangled into “God particle”. All according to a physicist that I heard interviewed on TV this morning.
Can you contrast this to other particles that are not directly related to fields: (I assume) this includes quarks and neutrino’s. If all particles can also be considered waves, what are quarks and neutrino’s waves in?
Quarks are ripples in quark fields. Neutrinos are ripples in neutrino fields. Specifically, quarks are represented by a triplet of dirac fields, corresponding to the three color charges in quantum chromodynamics.
So, if you look at the odd hodgepodge of fields that came to make up our universe, is it the idiosyncratic nature of them all that leads physicists to theorize about string theory / more exotic multi-dimensional physical models?
As a lay-person, one does start to get the sense that the universe we live in just happens to be made up of a weird collection of fields, spacial dimensions, and whatever it is we experience as time…(I.e., as if our universe is some random scoop of a collection of more fundamental aspects of physical reality.)
String theory a result of the pursuit of a theory of Quantum Gravity, not the result of a philosophical response to nature’s idiosyncrasies.
Well, I get much that sense too – that nature is somewhat arbitrary – and this leads me to a very anthropic worldview, in other words that there are countless varieties of universes, and we just happen to find ourselves in one random one that happens to be suitable for life. This line of thought is philosophically pleasing to me, because a countless variety of universes does not seem idiosyncratic or arbitrary to me. It seems to be mandated, as I do not believe there is any supernatural authority deciding which universes should and should not exist.
That said, our universe is in many ways non-idiosyncratic. It is in some ways simple, beautiful, and symmetric. All of those crazy fields? Yes, there are a strange number of them. And no, we can’t explain the seemingly random set of couplings and masses and so on. But those types of fields are predicted by a certain set of simple and in some ways fundamental symmetries: rotation, translation, poincare, U(1), SU(2), SU(3), etc. This is the reason why Supersymmetry is a popular idea: it is another of these beautiful symmetries, and so far nature has observed all of them, so we expect it to be supersymmetric as well. I have found that the more I understand about particle physics, the more I find myself convinced that nature is both extraordinarily un-idiosyncratic, while at the same time still be arbitrary enough to convince one that there is no deep reason why this particular universe is unique.
This is going to be an incredibly stupid question, I’m sure, but what precisely is a “field?” What generates a field? Is it like The Force? Just something that sort of exists and permeates everything, is it just a potential property of any given point in space ("between this point and this point there is an electromagnetic and higgs field, but here there isn’t!), is there some sort of object that generates it? The latter sounds backwards, if these particles are perturbations of the field, then it implies that the field is the default state and it generates particles, not the other way around, but I can’t really grasp what a “field” is.
The Higgs Field comprises Bosons, the Field is everywhere, around us, in us - throughout the universe and beyond. It is an invisible ‘mesh’ through which everything (atoms, etc) must move. As stuff moves through the field at sub-atomic level, it all takes form (gains ‘mass’), diff kinds of mass depending on it’s atomic composition.
It just happened - came into existence - a split second after the big bang. We don’t know anymore than that - it exists is all we know, and we only just about know that much. Hey, the kids on the blue planet ain’t so bright yet.
Not a stupid question. A field is exactly like a drum head, or a trampoline. In fact, both of those are examples of fields. When you apply quantum mechanics to a field, you get “minimum possible” vibrations. These are particles. In physics, when we talk about a field like the electromagnetic field or the Higgs field, imagine a drum head filling all of space. What is the drum head made of? If you think about it, the question doesn’t make much sense. If I told you it was made out of atoms you might be satisfied until you ask what atoms are made of. Eventually you might ask what electrons and quarks are made of. And I’ll have to say: they are excitations of a field. After all, they have to be made of something. That something is a field. So you’ve got this drum head filling all of space that is not made out of atoms – it just is. It has some rules that it lives by, telling it how it can vibrate, and how it vibrates in response to other fields, and so on. Is it flat like a drum head? No, it’s a bit more complicated. It’s in 3 dimensions, not 2, and it has some more degrees of freedom, like spin. But it is basically just a mathematical object filling all of space, where each point in space the field can have some value, and where those values can change: the field can be warped, it can vibrate, and so on.
It’s a victory for the power and reliability of observation.
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iamnotbatman, you are the Richard Feynmann of our time.
I’d like to ask a final question on the border between Physics and Philosophy. Basically, I’m trying to get at where the line is drawn between the metaphors physicists use to describe a phenomenon being something akin to what is actually going on versus just a way to talk about math that happens to be able to describe certain phenomenon. (For example, old metaphor of an atom being like a mini-solar system isn’t really a reflection of what’s actually happening in an atom.)
So, what’s the answer to this question when it comes to ideas around physical space. We now talk about physical space as being something tangible: it has a certain number of dimensions, it can be bent, etc. But is there any direct evidence that this is the case (I know there are experiments showing light bends around a massive object, but is interpreting this as space bending the only available interpretation?)
So, that people theorize about a possible 4th or other additional dimensions–since that’s not something we can even visualize, why think it’s even possible? What if space just is, and saying it has “3 dimensions” is really more of an artifact from the way humans have developed to measure and delineate it.
I’m fascinated by the original question: “Why do things have mass?” Offhand, I’d like the answer to be, “they just do.” It seems to be so natural to think that objects, i.e. chairs, hats, neutrons, etc. have mass. It’s a property of matter. Why wouldn’t they have mass? There’s something there. It resists motion. Why wouldn’t things have mass? Why is this such a deep, imponderable question? (Clearly, my presence at CERN is not in high demand.)
You mean like gravity?
Science needs evidence, pref proof. Something you can work with.
Now we have it, we can measure it, define it, look for variations - maybe in 100 years replicate or use it. Until now, Higgs was our best guess for what gave stuff mass.
Saying that space has 3 dimensions just means that you need three numbers in order to specify the location of something. Why 3 numbers? Why not 2, 5, or 17? When people theorize about a possible 4th or Nth dimension, they think it’s possible because, well, why should it not be possible? The number 3 is just as arbitrary as 4, or 9, or 214. The reason it is easy for you to visualize 3 dimensions and not 4 is because you live in 3 dimensions, and your brain evolved to be able to visualize the world you live in. But there is nothing special about 3 dimensions, and no reason why the universe should be 3, rather than 11, or 75.
When you say that there is talk about physical space being somehow tangible, I think you are referring to descriptions in general relativity, in which space is warped around massive objects. There is certainly direct evidence that space acts like it is warped, but whether or not your picture of it as being somehow* actually physically warped*, is correct, that is a purely philosophical question. In fact, there is a lot of evidence in physics, called dualities, that generally if you have one way of visualizing something that seems correct, there is another, totally different way of visualizing the same thing, but that actually describes the same physics. For example, the picture you have in your brain of space being warped may be completely mathematically equivalent, to a quantum mechanical theory in a different number of dimensions. And I’m not just making that example up!
Now that we know what gives mass, I predict some new fad diets on the way.
“Try the Higgs-Boson diet! Reduce your mass but not the flavor of your food!”
I found this little piece about why it’s called the God Particle a little funny.
From Wiki…
Lederman said he gave the Higgs boson the nickname “The God Particle” because the particle is “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive,”[5][6][7] but jokingly added that a second reason was because “the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing.”[5][8]
However, isn’t it easier to work with doing your math with regards to certain numbers of dimensions? For instance, I imagine 3 and 7 would be good numbers to work with because of the convenience of quaternions or octonions for rotation, respectively.
Quaternions are cute, sure, but using them to perform rotations is pretty small fish in the domain of modern physics, where the math is so difficult that worrying about the efficiency of doing a rotation is “in the noise”, as it were. And anyways, in any dimension there are cute ways that can be invented of doing things like rotations.