In nuclear chemistry elements beyond Plutonium do not occur in nature and are synthesized artificially. Is it a similar case for Higgs boson too?
If so, how does it give mass to particles if it doesn’t exist? Did scientists create Higgs at LHC in 2011 just to make sure our universe exists through some kind of circular causation?
I’m obviously not understanding this properly. Please dispel my misunderstandings with reasonable explanations!
The way I understand it is that it’s a field just as photons are an excitation of the electromagnetic field.
Except that the Higgs interacts with some particles giving them “mass” where they otherwise wouldn’t.
So it “exists” in the sense that there is an all pervasive field that is interacting with other fields/particles.
PBS space time is a great channel for things like this
And here’s an easier intro to the topic
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Definitely. There’s always whole swathes of nuance and you have to do that. Even so I still find some of it hard to follow.
Similar to viascience. Great introductory material that gets harder and harder the deeper you go.
Which, to me, just speaks of the incredible depth of knowledge we have and astounds me that we figured out as much as we have as it gets less and less intuitive.
The Higgs boson isn’t an atom like plutonium, it’s “further down”. I think of it in levels:
- atoms, which are made up of
- electrons “orbiting” the nucleus, the nucleus being made up of protons and neutrons. In turn, protons and neutrons are made up of
- quarks
Quarks are a kind of elementary particle called fermions, which are at the same level as bosons (and electrons). Down here it’s all weird and quantum but in an oversimplified nutshell, it’s not so much that they physically exist as that in the maths* we can treat them as existing which makes it easier to think about.
* of the physics models we use
I’m a computer scientist, not a real scientist, so I stand ready to be corrected by those more knowledgable.
edit: @[email protected] is more knowledgable and helped me fix this up a bit.
The fermions are particles with mass, an electron is already a fundamental fermion and not made up of quarks like protons and neutrons. The fundamental bosons (as far as I know) are particles that “handle” the interactions between other particles for instance gluons enable the strong force, while W and Z Bosons enable the weak force.
I believe the fundamental Higgs boson does occur in nature but likely immediately decays. (if I’m wrong I’d love to know how it actually enables certain interactions in nature)
Also I’m not studying quantum physics so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone needs to correct me. :)
Edit: clarified when fundamental fermions/bosons were meant.
Small clarification - the fundamental bosons are the ones that handle particle interactions, whilst fundamental fermions make up matter.
It is however possible to have atoms that are fermions or bosons depending on the total number (even or odd) particles that make them up.
Yup, should’ve clarified that I meant fundamental bosons, as any particle with integer spin is considered bosonic, while particles with half integer spin are fermionic, fundamental bosons alone still can’t make up matter though and protons/neutrons are fermionic.
That’s true… kinda makes a mess of my simple model 😅
I’ll edit in your correction, thanks.
The higgs particle itself isn’t important, it’s the higgs field that makes the world go 'round. The way I understand it, is the field permeates all of space and time (like all other fields) and the particle appears at places of high disruptions in the field, like what the LHC created.
Now, I’m no PhD, so take this with heaps of salt.
Yeah, you prove the field exists by exciting it and making it produce quanta, kind of like photons being the quanta of the EM field being excited.
Photons are excitations in the EM field, but they also carry the electromagnetic force between particles - thus giving them charge. But in order to do that photon actually needs to be created and travel from one particle to another. If Higgs works in a similar way also being a boson, one might expect it also to need to exist to do it’s job. . What is the difference here?
But in order to do that photon actually needs to be created and travel from one particle to another.
The electromagnetic force is mediated by virtual photons. These don’t exist as free particles, such as a photon emitted by a light source, but only as an intermediate particle. Because they’re only intermediate states, virtual photons can have non-physical energies (so long as they’re within the uncertainty principle), resulting in some having an effective mass. Suffice it to say virtual photons are quite distinct from real ones! Technically, I believe you could have some of the basic features of the em force (namely attraction/repulsion by 2 point charges) with just virtual photons. Things get tricky once charges begin accelerating though, as this leads to the emission of real photons.
If Higgs works in a similar way also being a boson
The short answer is, it doesn’t. The Higgs Field gives mass to fundamental particles. Existing in that field causes certain particles to have mass due to their coupling to the field. The W and Z weak gauge bosons gain mass through electroweak symmetry breaking, quarks and leptons gain mass through a different coupling. I realize this is a very unsatisfying answer as to “how” the Higgs field creates mass, but the mechanism involves some complex math (group theory and non-abelian gauge theory), so it kind of defies a simpler explanation. Regardless, it’s through interactions with the Higgs field (which can exist without any Higgs bosons around) that fundamental particles gain mass. The search for the Higgs boson was just to confirm the existence of the field, because while the field can exist without Higgs bosons present it must be possible to excite it sufficiently to create them.
Going back to your original question: these particles have almost certainly been created “naturally” in high energy collisions between particles and matter. Nature can achieve much higher energies than our particle accelerators. The highest energy particle ever observed was a cosmic ray. However, Higgs bosons are extremely short lived, with a lifetime of 10^-22 seconds. So whenever they’re created, they don’t stick around for a meaningful amount of time.
Higgs boson has mass and quite large one at that and this puts limitations on how hard is it to generate it and on how field behaves
When you don’t provide enough energy to get whole Higgs boson, interactions happen via virtual particles. It’s easier to grasp this idea with weak interactions and W and Z bosons
But in order to do that photon actually needs to be created and travel from one particle to another.
Not really, no. At some point I’m going to exceed my own expertise here since I’m not a QFT expert, but in quantum mechanics things don’t firmly exist or not exist. The photons in question are “virtual particles”.
Particles are just a way of looking at excited quantum fields. The Higgs field is always everywhere, giving things mass.
Honestly, depending on interpretation of quantum mechanics, you don’t need to acknowledge particles exist at all. It could all be fields becoming ever more entangled and wrinkled.
Photons are also bosons, right? Why do we need all the huge energy particle smashing experiment at LHC, while we can get any energy photons everywhere? What’s the difference?
Its better to not think of it as something we created in a lab. Higgs plays a part in making nature do what it does.
If you want to learn more about the Higgs Mechanism, check out this video from PBS Space Time. You might also find some good info in the comments as well.
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Holy crap, how did I not know about Chris? I binge watch all the big physicist YouTubers.
Thank you for mentioning him. My grey matter just got turned to mush by his 5-dimensional universe theory. I can’t wait to see how this affects MOND.
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Sorry, can’t answer your question. Quick correction though, uranium is the highest atomic number that occurs nationally.
Edit: so I’m wrong about this. In school we learned that it was uranium and that’s also what it said when I checked sources, but not enough. Apologies.
Naturally*
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The Oklo natural nuclear reactor has naturally occurring plutonium and neptunium
