What is the ‘Higgs Boson’ and why is it important?
July 5, 2012
(Credit: PHD Comics)
What It Means to Find ‘a Higgs’ — Scientific American
Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe — The New York Times
Howard Bloom, author of the forthcoming book, The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, comments: “The god particle, the Higgs boson, is a bit of a red herring. It’s an infinite regress. Once upon a time, god believers had a problem: if everything that exists must be the product of a creator, then who created the creator? Now physicists are running into the same problem. If every force acting at a distance must be explained by a particle, what explains how particles seduce and repel each other? What explains the propulsive powers of force at a distance? There may or may not be a Higgs boson and it may or may not be hooked to mass. But even if it is, how do mere particles pull off force at a distance? How do they move things to and away from each other? how do mere particles seduce, kidnap, and recruit?”
Comments (18)
by egore
Just letting you know we know how to read. Thanks for your interest, and I hope you enjoy your lonesome life.
by Bri
Aren’t we glad there are no pistols or swords, in this duel of honor.
by alex
Hey egore, nice attempt at intelligence. You post comes word for word from wikipedia. All I had to do was cut, paste and search in google.
People, use your brains!!!!!! Don’t think you can always hide behind a screen.
by hov
maybe egore wrote the wikipedia piece…?
by egore
Perhaps it should be noted. Only 1 % of the mass of composite particles, such as the proton and neutron, is due to the Higgs mechanism acting to produce the mass of quarks. The other 99 % is due to the mass added by the kinetic energies of quarks and the energies of {massless} gluons of the strong interaction inside baryons.
by alex
Science is based on fact whether you believe it or not. The same people that talk like most of you once said the discovery of the electron meant nothing but then mankind kind had electricity. Open your eyes.
The standard model isn’t something they put together 20 or 30 years ago. It’s based on almost three hundred years of science experiment and thought and observation. It is built upon idea by idea. Not all theories come true as is true with the Higgs Boson. Stephen Hawking a physicist himself bet the higgs particle wouldn’t be found. He was wrong, does that make him dumb or does that mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? No! They (physicists) make guesses based on their mathematical work and wait till the data backs it up and it is approved widely by everyone beyond doubt through experiment. Once other discoveries are made, the ideas change and evolve. We used to believe the solar system was the universe and that chaos couldn’t possibly exist and be connected intimately with order.
Why are people so quick to doubt the ones who actually studied in school? Science isn’t politics and if you think it is, you obviously don’t understand the profession itself. It’s about curiosity and understanding.
If the ideas scare you, examine yourself and your stubborn views. Nature is what it is and works how it works.
I just watched pavement asphalt blow car tires from extreme heat on the news(cnn). I bet you guys dont believe climate change either.
by egore
As I see it, we can accept higgs or something like it, or accept that we are in a large hologram. please, please tell me I am wrong.
by Editor
Both are serious theories in physics
by Bri
I know what I see. I’d vote that we’re making the holodeck, together!
by Bri
The big problem with that is , that those assumption have real numbers that elegantly describe what’s going on. My point is that it seems like a little of nothing, making it appear like there is something there. Without the Higgs “particle”, stars couldn’t form because nothing would have mass. The other ” particles” are quarks and electrons, to make matter. Electrons aren’t too solid. Quarks aren’t too solid. It’s like smoke and mirrors, these vectors of force. Like a projection in a holodeck.
by egore
Now we know what makes real to the feel, what about anti higgs and does it exist?
by Chrispium
Now that they have found all these particles and invented the Standard Model I’m kinda wondering, have they ever tried making other models that describe the same particles?
Can a mathematical model be developed that can say something about how many possible solutions to the current set of particles and forces there might be?
@Dan below
There are 3 videos on this page. Sometimes if you have blockers installed Vimeos player might not show up. Just click in the empty white area to see if anything pops into existence.
by Editor
Another model for these particles is supersymmetry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry.
by Chrispium
Yes, I’ve heard of that one. But I was thinking more broadly along the lines of: Can it be hypothesized or calculated how many possible solutions there are to the current dataset that we have. I mean, are we looking at a few explanations or are there going on infinite solutions?
Think about back when we had the geocentric view of cosmology. Back then scientists managed to come up with explanations for why objects in the sky would follow the patterns that they did. Now we have eliminated that one (the geocentric view), but how many more could there be?
by Chrispium
Almost forgot, KUDOS on the changes to board functionality!!!! :)
by Skye
So it’s like friction… but friction is a phenomenon that occurs above this level…
Tortoises all the way down.
by Bri
The more you listen to these theories, the more you feel like your on some holodeck of something else. So let me get this straight, if the Higgs field were somehow shunted, or neutralized, then uranium would act more like light? It would become massless, yet the only change would be that the Higgs boson couldn’t affect it. I know this is totally a hypothetical idea, but it just seems like matter is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. A lot of nothing, making it look like something.
by Dan Robinson
Did I miss something? On this site I saw a lot of “empty” space, both white and black, maybe random energy and dark matter? Or maybe it’s about the solar flair I’m told is disrupting things.
The deeper I see us going into quantum and sub-atomic physics, and further into cosmology, the longer I see the chains of assumptions on which they’re based and the more I feel we should be talking about maybe “experiences” rather than particles and forces.