August 11, 2005

• I should have made it clear that the Higgs field is as unproven as the existance of the Higgs boson. It's a predicted model reliant on the latter.
• Whew, thick stuff!
• What's a "Higgs boson"? Is it big & hairy?
• "Look Kemosabe, it's a thundering heard of boson headed this way! We better climb this tree here and pray to Great Spirit!" (Okay, I'm half-lit and 3/4 nuts.)
• I wonder if this collider will be the one that is able to create a small black hole that will swallow up the earth? Love this stuff. Amazing that we still have very little clue as to the nature of mass.
• Imagine a cocktail party of political party workers who are uniformly distributed across the floor, all talking to their nearest neighbours.
• huh?
• These " Higgs Fields " and " All Pervasive Quantum Vaccum " concepts are strikingly similar to the " Aether " concepts of the previous century aren't they ? And probably just as wrong.
• The Higgs boson (a.k.a. "the god particle") is a particle that is similar but not quite to gravity what electrons are to electricity. tellurian's link is very good, and there are other "one page explanations" that are great reads as well. Feel free to lambast me for confusing you with the "similar but not quite" pop science explanation. Now, The reason we have not proven the existence of it is because our particle accelerators are 2GeV (2*10^9 electron-volts) lower than what we would need to, theoretically (finally, a worthwhile use of that word!), observe it. The problem is that is the Higgs boson's mass is about "thousand-billion-billion-billionth (10 -30) the mass of an electron". So, it's a bit hard to "see." Everyone's pretty anxious right now because we're getting to the upper bounds of the predicted energies needed to observe it. We've reached up to ~115GeV and, fortunately, some new accelerators that are being built right now will be able to blow away those numbers away. </physics geek>
• So, does this actualy make any predictions that the standard model doesn't? There don't seem to be any shortage of theories of various levels of wildness out there. New Scientist is particularly fond of splashing on the latest highly abstract theory of the week that subsequently sinks without trace. (e.g. "Undergraduate proposes atoms are all pushed around by bloody minded invisible space monkeys! Explains all observed phenomena! Doesn't predict any new ones!")
• Higgs boson's mass is about "thousand-billion-billion-billionth (10 -30) the mass of an electron". So, it's a bit hard to "see." Thanks for that jmhodges. Those one page explanations are about all I can manage to get my head around and your statement explains to me what they are trying to do with collider. Sorry if I confused you Medusa, the link is to higgs boson for dummies.
• Zealot: You're totally right about New Scientist. I gave up using them as a source for information many, many moons ago. From the bottom of the link:

  "This stuff, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, is not even wrong," he says. But physicist Paul Wesson of Stanford University in California says Rueda and Haisch's unorthodox approach shows promise, though he adds that the theory needs to be backed up by experimental evidence. "If Haisch [and Rueda] could come up with a concrete prediction, then that would make people sit up and take notice," he says. "We're all looking for something we can measure."

  (my emphasis) That's pretty much my take on it. Give me something you predict, and let's run the test. I'll have to pop off and read the paper to say more about its veracity. Don't expect a thoroughly enlightened response after I read it. PRL can kick the ass of most Ph.D's, much less a senior undergradute.
• "..strikingly similar to the " Aether " concepts of the previous century aren't they?" Funny you should say that, I was just musing on that this afternoon. The properties of theorised dark energy has even more similarities to the aether. Rather than being wrong, maybe the 19th century theorists were heading in the right direction? It would certainly make Doug Adams' 'sub-etha radio' seem a lot better :)
• The postulated Higgs field in the vacuum is a sort of hypothetical lattice which fills our Universe. We need it because otherwise we cannot explain why the Z and W particles which carry the weak interactions are so heavy while the photon which carries electromagnetic forces is massless. Can someone explain this? I thought I knew a bit about gravity and strong and weak atomic forces, but Z and W are new to me. Also, the concept of mass seems like kind of a given to me. Particles have mass, we have to explain this all of a sudden? And we do it by assuming the existence of this field, which seems infinitely more complex. If people couldn't just accept the fact that particles simply have mass, then they better explain where this field came from, and these bosons.
• Sorry, I missed something. The problem is that is the Higgs boson's mass is about "thousand-billion-billion-billionth (10 -30) the mass of an electron". Hold on one fucking second. How can the particle whose existence is assumed to explain mass, have mass itself? If the existence of this boson "explains" the mass of other particles, then what "explains" the mass of the boson?
• I like eggs.
• I like chickens.
• I like chocolate milk.
• This thread thinks it's smarter'n me. *punches thread in the nose*
• smallish bear, the issue here is not that particles have certain mass, it is how they come to have mass.
• Hold on one fucking second. How can the particle whose existence is assumed to explain mass, have mass itself? *crowd mutters* rhubarb, rhubarb, Yeah, yeah, how can that be?
• Mass seems to me like one of the few items in the universe which has a straightforward logical explanation. If your universe includes space with particles in it, there has to be a law, or they have to have a property, which means their velocity stays the same until something happens to change it. Otherwise velocities could change randomly and your universe would be incoherent. But then my grasp of modern physics is about as good as my ballet dancing.
• "How can the particle whose existence is assumed to explain mass, have mass itself?" Ah, I think I grok the confusion. The Higgs boson does not 'explain mass'. It has to exist because of wave-particle duality. All quantum fields have a fundamental particle associated with them; the Higgs boson is the particle component of the hypothetical Higgs field, which is theorised to pervade the universe and it is this which gives particles mass. The nature of sub-atomic particles is hugely confusing, it is not helpful to imagine them as teeny tiny discrete little planets with mass and spin & so on, because they don't actually manifest as such outside of our equations. Or more correctly, the waveform collapses into a particle when you measure it. Until you measure it, it's not a particle. :/ or something :0
• We can infer the mass of the Higgs boson based upon the effect it would have on the other particles and fields. /brain explodes
• As far as I understand, which is not as far as I would like, Higgs Bosons can interact with one another (unlike, say, photons - which are also bosons - which don't interact with each other.) This is similar to gluons (which carry the strong force) which can interact with each other, forming 'glueballs' of interacting bosons, existing independently of quarks. So there.
• your universe would be incoherent You mean it's not? So this explains why mass has the effects it does? Like momentum, gravity, various atomic forces, etc. I just reread the first link- I was thinking of mass and matter as being the same, or, mass being simply the amount of matter in something. Now that I have a good grasp of what we're talking about, I remember reading something similar to this. The analogy used was a bed or something (the field) with a bunch of marbles on it (matter). If you put a bowling ball in the middle, it creates a depression, and all the marbles in it roll toward the bowling ball (gravity). The heavier the ball, the bigger the depression, and so forth.
• As far as I understand, which is not as far as I would like, Higgs Bosons can interact with one another (unlike, say, photons - which are also bosons - which don't interact with each other.) This is similar to gluons (which carry the strong force) which can interact with each other, forming 'glueballs' of interacting bosons, existing independently of quarks. So there. /brain also explodes Cleanup in aisle 9449. Good thread.
• I like eggs a lot.
• I remember reading something similar to this. The analogy used was a bed or something (the field) with a bunch of marbles on it (matter). If you put a bowling ball in the middle, it creates a depression, and all the marbles in it roll toward the bowling ball (gravity). The heavier the ball, the bigger the depression, and so forth. This analogy's been used to explain how gravity causes space-time curvature. But it looks flawed big time to me. Namely it's explaining gravity in terms of ......gravity! Those marbles are rolling down toward the bowling ball because of uh, huh, that's right. That ain't no analogy. Rhubarb, rhubarb.
• The nature of sub-atomic particles is hugely confusing, it is not helpful to imagine them as teeny tiny discrete little planets This goes to the heart of why all this stuff is hard to understand. We need analogies to get understanding. But the ones we come up with are based on our big world experience (i.e. mass = big chunks of stuff), which doesn't apply to the infinitiesimal quantum weirdness world. I mean, if an electron isn't a baseball whizzing around the mother proton, then what is "it". "It" is a probability wave function. Hunh? Some of the recent unification theories require eleven dimensions. Okay let me try picturing that..*splat goes my head* .it doesn't help even if they say that some of those dimensions are supposedly teensy weensy little dimensions.
• Um. This is why I went to grad school to study brains. Brains make sense. Physics was fun when I took it (finally gave me a real-world use for algebra!) but quickly became too abstract for my line of thinking. Not that I couldn't get an idea of some of this eventually, but man. I just filed my dissertation today and then this thread made me feel dumb. Thanks, Chyren. ))
• That's another thing that bugs me- tiny dimensions. What kind of fucking nonsense is that. This isn't like dimension X, where krang comes out to beat up ninja turtles. It's a dimension like time, or the 3 dimensions of physical space, right? I can imagine there being more dimensions of space that we just can't see, or more of time, or even a dimension of something else entirely. But whatever it is, I refuse to accept that it is small, or even has a size at all.
• "Why Quantum Physics Make Brains Go *Splat*" A dissertation in the field of neural biology by caution live frogs Submitted August 11, 2005
• I remember reading somewhere (Scientific American or something like that) about studies showing that when the brain analyzes 2-dimensional shapes, the parts of the brain that are most active lie in a 2D plane, and when it analyzes 3D structures, the active parts form a 3D region. The reason you can't comprehend 11-dimensional space is because you are using a 3-dimensional brain!
• That can't be true... can it?
• smallish bear; a dimension (in this context) is simply a value needed to uniquely specify the location of an event. For example, three numbers can tell you exactly where something happened, but more than one event can have those three (space) co-ordinates. You need another number (time) to separate the two events. Similarily, those extra 11 (or whatever) dimensions are 11 more numbers needed to distinguish between events that happen at the same space and time. The dimensions are 'small' because the range of possible values in that co-ordinate is small (compared to the sizes of the first 4 dimensions.)
• Eggs come in 12s. 11 means there's one missing.
• This is similar to gluons (which carry the strong force) which can interact with each other, forming 'glueballs' of interacting bosons, existing independently of quarks. AAaiiGGH! Fnords! *opens fire*
• I hate eggs. posted by Roquat the Red at 09:26PM UTC on August 11, 2005 I like L. Frank Baum.
• zealot- that is exactly how I see a dimension. I think of it as an axis, like on a graph. The 3 space dimensions we know about can be represented by 3 orthogonal axes, extending infinitely in 2 directions. The time one would start at the big bang and extend infinitely into the future. Any dimension, in this sense, would almost have to be infinite. I thought about the small range thing, and dismissed it because describing the dimension as "small" is deceptive. Just because all the currently known data points lie within a certain range doesn't mean that the axis does not extend beyond that range. I would consider these dimensions to be infinite as well- only, the points we have currently observed (or plotted due to some theory) lie within a small range. The reference to the ninja turtles was a joke, although I think many people would first think of twilight-zone alternate dimensions when you tell them that there are 11 dimensions and some of them are really tiny.
• Really tiny eggs are sometimes chocolate.
• Easter eggs can be hard to find. Can we build an Easter egg detector instead?
• I thought about the small range thing, and dismissed it because describing the dimension as "small" is deceptive Aha! But what if the dimension was curved in on itself. Then it could be quite small and still not have any boundaries, right?
• Those dimensions are just vectors.
• But what if the dimension was curved in on itself. Then it could be quite small and still not have any boundaries, right? Like an egg!
• I am the Walrus! Koo koo ka joob!
• What StoreyBored said. (I want a Waffle.)
• Aha! But what if the dimension was curved in on itself. Then it could be quite small and still not have any boundaries, right? Or maybe the dimension was swimming all day...in cold water...yeah, that's the ticket!
• Those dimensions are just vectors. Hmmm. You can have a vector in a dimension. But I don't think you can say that a dimension is a vector (?). Also we can measure three dimensional space. It's real. What's to say the other 11 dimensions aren't real? *resists urge to say anything about eggs*
• Also we can measure three dimensional space. It's real. Is it? Is It??
• Ha! Ha! Those pictures are fake. I know because there is no such thing as big or small. There is only one size in the universe and as everyone knows it's medium. Stop trying to scare me.
• nifty article / picture on Bose-Einstein condensate