Comments on: Chatting Higgs

By: Superconductors in the Summer | Quantum Frontiers

Superconductors in the Summer | Quantum Frontiers — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:40:50 +0000

[...] Imaging (MRI), and particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider that discovered the Higgs boson, to name a few! The Meissner effect at work. Below a certain critical temperature, a superconductor [...]

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 06:52:04 +0000

Huffingtonpost; presumably smart people channeling density like certain elementary particles channel mass.

The Hugs field: group synch.

Inevitably fleeting; the world be saved.

By: meh

meh — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:15:41 +0000

wuh?

anywho, I would say that the Higgs is one of the most misunderstood things in Physics. It’ll be nice to have people from different levels of experience come together and explain it for everyone.

I think the concept of a Higgs Field and how it imparts mass is pretty good evidence for M-Theory.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 05:16:54 +0000

@Sean Carroll

“we’re having a video chat, sponsored by the Huffington Post”

Politically Fred Hoyle-like.

Smart people not so much.

By: max

max — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 01:42:14 +0000

@ Albanius, to add to what Entropy said, the Higgs field is kind of weird in its Lorentz invariance. No matter how fast you go or what direction you look, the Higgs field always has the same value (it’s a scalar — just a number at every point in space-time). While electromagnetism works the exact same way regardless of how fast you’re going, the electromagnetic field itself looks a little different. If you speed up, electric fields will generally transform into magnetic fields and vice versa.

I always thought that the “Higgs field as molasses” explanation was misleading precisely because it so strongly implies implies a rest-frame.

By: Entropy

Entropy — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:33:28 +0000

@ Albanius

The Earth needn’t have a velocity WRT the Higgs field any more than it needs to have one with respect to the electromagnetic field. Indeed, what Michelson-Morley really proves is that the electromagnetic field does not have velocity/orientation/time-dependent properties, which is called Lorentz invariance. All Standard Model fields, including the Higgs field, are similarly Lorentz invariant by construction.

@ Simon

Even though the end result of the Higgs contribution is on the percent level, it is still critical. Without the Higgs, the composite particles as we know them (e.g. proton) would not exist. Additionally, the electron’s mass is a direct result of the Higgs field.

By: Albanius

Albanius — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:15:09 +0000

Another naive question: if the Higgs field (or fields) pervades space and confers mass to quarks and massive bosons, how is that reconciled with the Michelson-Morley experiment?

Wouldn’t Earth have a particular velocity relative to this field?

I suppose the answer is that light, unlike massive particles, doesn’t interact with the Higgs field, so its velocity is always c, regardless of the motion of the observer relative to the Higgs field.

By: James

James — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:02:40 +0000

Matt Strassler, on this point, notes that particle masses affect the strength of the strong nuclear force and thus the mass of nucleons. Though I’m not quite sure how. Quark masses drop out of the QCD beta function, no?

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:12:45 +0000

Sean – thanks for the answer. Figured as much but good to know from an expert.

By: Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:56:39 +0000

The Higgs contribution is a tiny amount. Most of the mass in atoms comes from the QCD binding energies in protons and neutrons.