The Higgs Boson Re-Explained By the Mick Jagger of Physics

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Jorge Cham, author of the comic strip Ph.D. comics, recently found himself on a bus crossing the Israel-Jordan border sitting next to Eilam Gross, head of the Atlas Higgs Group, one of the two groups that found the famous particle. When Cham asked Gross for feedback on the Higgs Boson animation he had done last year, Gross told Cham 'It's all wrong' and noted that he had yet to see a truly correct explanation of what the the Higgs Boson is. For the next three hours Gross, also known as the 'Mick Jagger of physics,' told Cham the story of the Higgs Boson and asked him to put it into a new comic strip. The result is a new comic re-explaining the Higgs Boson. 'So how does this explain things like inertia?' 'That's another bus ride.' As an interesting side note Gross was once asked what Higgs was good for and replied that when [J.J.] Thomson discovered the electron, in 1895, he raised a glass of champagne and proposed a toast 'to the useless electron.'"

Comments

Stil waiting.

[Geoffrey.landis]

I've been waiting years for a good explanation of Higgs!
Too bad. Still waiting.

Re:Stil waiting.

[PacoSuarez]

This is the best I've found so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Still not quite correct.

[BitterOak]

This explanation and comic are very good, but it makes the same fundamental mistake that so many physicists have made in trying to explain the Higgs field. It compares the field to molasses, slowing down particles by "sticking" to them, or providing some sort of friction to slow them down to sub-light speeds. This is fundamentally incorrect as molasses, or any other frictional medium, opposes the motion of particles, slowing them down until they eventually come to rest with respect to the frictional medium (molasses in this analogy). This is not at all how the Higgs field works. It doesn't oppose the motion of particles at all. In fact, Newton's law of inertia states that a body in motion will continue in motion at the same velocity until acted upon by an external force, and this is still true even in the presence of the Higgs field. There's nothing molasses-like about it at all. In fact, as a relativistic field the Higgs field has no rest frame. Put in other words, the Higgs field has no velocity of its own, zero or otherwise. If it did, it would break a fundamental symmetry law of special relativity: namely that all inertial frames of reference are equivalent. No field that behaves anything like molasses would be consistent with that principle.

Re:Still not quite correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1
Higgs field doesn't "give" particles mass in any special way.
It gives them mass just like, say, electric field or gravitational field might: through their potential energy in that field. Many particles, in order to exist, have potential energy in some field(s), and that energy is their mass (see Einstein) and that's all there is to it.

For example protons and neutrons also have mass, but 99% of that mass is the energy of quarks holding themselves together. They don't need (and I think don't have at all) any energy in Higgs field and yet have mass perfectly fine.

Re:Still not quite correct.

[poopdeville]

I can see where you're coming from, but I read it as comparing the early universe to molasses, not the effect of the Higgs field as such. Soupy and homogeneous (mostly).

Re:Still not quite correct.

[aybiss]

Overanalyse analogies much?

I see your point, but if anyone trying to understand physics is under the impression that there's a molasses-like 'ether' filling the subatomic interstices then no amount of explaining the creation of scalar fields to maintain symmetry in other equations is going to help them. I think you're being too picky in the interest of talking down to people. Nothing in that comic came as a surprise to me (I already understood the principle of the conjecture, just not the maths behind it), but I can assure you that even if my grasp were much more limited I would not walk away from that comic thinking there is molasses in a vacuum.

Re:Still not quite correct.

[hweimer]

Further issues:

1. The claim that theories should contain certain symmetries because of aesthetic perceptions is misguided. The standard model, the most successful physical theory ever written down by mankind, is ugly as shit.

2. Symmetry does not protect reality from divergence.

3. It is wrong that without the Higgs, there would be no mass and we all would die. For the gauge bosons of the weak force, this would be true, but all leptons and quarks surrounding us can simply be described by a conventional mass term, as this doesn't break local gauge invariance.

Buckaroo Bonzai?

[goombah99]

I'd rather hear the Neil De Gras Tyson of Rock and Roll.

Re:Buckaroo Bonzai?

[Muros]

Would that be Brian May?

Symmetry is beautiful

[blue trane]

Just like planets had to orbit in circles because circles are beautiful?

Re:Symmetry is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Symmetry is very important in physics and math.
1. It helps us solve equations. Nearly all algebraic equations that are solvable, are solvable because of symmetry. For example: linear equations have a specific symmetry that makes them easy. So the main reason we look for symmetrical equations, is that these are the only equations we can handle.

2. Symmetry is an observed property of physics. The laws of physics don't change over time(time shift symmetry), they don't change by changing location(translational symmetry) and don't change by changing orientation(rotational symmetry). Newtonian physics doesn't change under acceleration(Galilean boost). However, Maxwell laws of EM aren't symmetrical under Galilean boost. Instead, Lorentz showed that they are symmetrical under Lorentz boost. Einstein determined that the Galilean boost is only an approximate symmetry, and that the Lorentz transformations were the real symmetry of physics. This is what led him to special relativity. A generalization of the Lorentz transformations to a local symmetry led to general relativity.

3. A theorem by Emmy Noether, says that continuous symmetries of the Lagrangian create conservation laws:
Time shift = Conservation of energy.
Translation = Conservation of momentum.
Rotation = Conservation of angular momentum.

Cow Particle

[Nefarious Wheel]

The Higgs should be renamed the Cow Particle, because it's outstanding in its field.

This is what you get when an experimetalist ...

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

tries to explain theory.

There are lots of misconceptions Symmetry, for example, does not prevent divergences.Divergences are still present although in a controllable way. That's what renormalization and the renormalization group is all about. If a symmetry is broken through quantum mechanical processes then the breaking can lead to new divergences which turn out to be uncontrollable if they do not follow a certain patterns. The symmetry leads to a conserved quantity and a current following the basic rule that the amount of current goes in determines the change in the conserved quantity ( charge ). In the case of QCD, for example, the charge is color ( red,blue.green. The pattern need to control the divergences caused by quantum color violations is that the sum of the current leakage has to equal zero.

This essentially says that quarks have to appear in pairs to cancel charge violations. So once a bottom quark was seen, there had to be a top quark.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism though.

The Higgs mechanism is based on the fact symmetry depends on two things. The laws of motion and the initial conditions. I can take a puck on a smooth surface and push in any direction and the motion will look the same. That's because the laws of motion and the initial conditions both obey a symmetry. If I replace the smooth surface with one with random bumps the motion will not look the same in all directions. The laws of motion are still the same in each direction, but the inital conditions no longer are. That's the Higgs mechanism at it's crudest.

Mick Jagger of physics

[loufoque]

What the fuck does that even mean?

Re:Mick Jagger of physics

[Hillgiant]

I'm not sure either. I suppose it might be because he can't get no satisfaction. Or perhaps he is a man of wealth and taste. Maybe he wants it painted black. Or all of the above.

Philosophical questions

[m.alessandrini]

"Does this field really exist... or did we invent it to make our equations work?"

I think that at those ultimate levels, this distinction is quite fuzzy for all the reality in general.

Great... or not so...

[advid.net]

I first read the comic strip, found it great, I thought I gained a deep understanding, and then I read the informative /. comments here and now I do not find it so great and I'm almost as confused as before....

Arg!

[Maury Markowitz]

"without the higgs field, there would be no mass terms in the equations"

*sigh*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor_(physics)

or any one of dozens of other theories that likewise generate mass using alternate methods. Yes, I am aware that none of them have been terribly successful, but they haven't been terribly popular either - and that's often the difference.

Re:ultra-heavy proton

[Maury Markowitz]

> made up of the same [previously undiscovered] ultra-heavy quarks

It's relatively easy to demonstrate that there are no ultra-heavy quarks. This was a key development in the 1970s (80s?)

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/why-do-we-think-there-are-only-three-generations-of-fundamental-particles