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Thanks for the summary! I wonder if you could eli5: I thought the Higgs was what gave other particles mass? How can it be heavier than the particles it gives

Thanks for the summary! I wonder if you could eli5: I thought the Higgs was what gave other particles mass? How can it be heavier than the particles it gives mass to?

harshreality 5y ago
It's the Higgs field that gives particles mass. https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Higgs-particles-mass https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Hi...
- felipellrocha 5y ago
  Oh, sure, sure. What is the field?
  - ajkjk 5y ago
    It is just one of the fields. The one whose interactions give particles mass. Modern physics has been working on finding and naming all of them.
    - ericbarrett 5y ago
      It gives some particles some mass. I had to look it up, because I'm no physicist, but e.g. most of a proton's mass comes from the strong force binding energy of its quarks.
      - ajkjk 5y ago
        That's true. I should have specified, fundamental particles. Although we're not sure about neutrinos.
gus_massa 5y ago
> I thought the Higgs was what gave other particles mass? Sorta yes, but it's more complicated. > How can it be heavier than the particles it gives mass to? There are a few bad explanations about the Higgs boson floating around. I hate all of them. I wish I can write a good one, but it's very difficult task. One of the explanations is the "prime minister" analogy, that says that the usual particles are like a prime minister, and the Higgs bosons are like the press reporters that follow the prime minister around. So even if the prime minister has no mass, the big bundle of the prime minister and the journalist has mass. In this explanation it's difficult to imagine why the mass of the bundle is smaller than the mass of each journalist. [Did I already said that I hate this explanation?] Oversimplifying toooo much: The idea is that the usual particles have something that look like mass because they bounce against the Higgs boson. They don't absorb the Higgs boson. They are not surrounded by Higgs bosons. They just bounce against a Higgs boson from time to time, and that somehow cause that they look like particles with mass. It's weird, very weird. The analogy does not give an intuitive explanation, but this can be formalized and the equations model the experiment accurately. But actually, the usual particles are not bouncing against Higgs boson, they are bouncing against the non-zero vacuum expectation value Higgs field. What is the Higgs field? What is the vacuum expectation value? Why it is not zero like in most fields? Those are hard questions! I watched the video in Encyclopædia Britannica linked in the sibling comment, and it's quite good. I hope it makes thing more clear than my explanation.
- Tomte 5y ago
  > There are a few bad explanations about the Higgs boson floating around. I hate all of them. What's your opinion on the PBS spacetime explanation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixAljyfdqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixAljyfdqU I've discovered the channel only recently, and have been binge-watching since.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    It's a nice explanation. I'll compare this video with https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Higgs-particles-mass https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Hi... that was linked in a sibling comment by harshreality. The PBS video: * Has more technical stuff, so I'd recommend to see the other video first. * I like that it explain chirality. It's very important for this subject. * I don't like that they say that massless particles "experience no time". It's a common idea floating around, but it cause more misinterpretations than what it helps in the explanations. * They explain hypercharge. It's really important, but I'd hide under the carpet because there are too many things to explain. * In particular the circle in 5:22 is misleading/wrong. IIRC it's not a circle (aka U(1)), it's a magic double sphere (aka SU(2)). A circle is a nice representation, but they put a "real" and a "imaginary" axis in the graph, as it were actually the circle in the complex plane. This part is also important, and specialist love it because spontaneous symmetry breaking is so unusual and weird, but I'd just hid it under the carpet too. * The idea that the "spin constantly flips back and forth" is wrong. The spin is stable. For example the left handed (L) version of the electron and the right handed (R) version have spin 1/2. If you take a particle with spin +1/2 in one direction, the L and R version "flips back and forth" but when you measure the spin again in the same direction you still get +1/2, because the spin does not change. What "flips back and forth" is the direction. The idea is very similar to what is explained in the video in Britannica. If you mix different amounts of L and R with spin +1/2 in one direction, you can get a particle that has spin +1/2 in that direction and any speed you like because the speed is something like the average of both speeds. The Higgs field somehow keep the L and R version together, instead of them flying away in oposite directions. For this part I strongly prefer how it is explained in the video in Britannica. It's a nice video, but they should fix the part about spin flipping. (And perhaps hide the some details, but this is a personal preference.)
evanb 5y ago
The Higgs is like the water in the ocean. Particles are like boats. Some boats have sleek hulls and so the water doesn't slow them down too much. These are particles without much mass. Some boats have a few barnacles on their hulls. These are particles with more mass. The analogy is imperfect: if you give a boat a single push it will come to a stop, losing energy to the water; if you give a particle a push through the Higgs field it keeps going, it is not possible to give your momentum to the vacuum.
ajkjk 5y ago
Particles interact with the Higgs field. This gives them masses based on the strength and nature of their interaction. The Higgs field also has a quanta, a Boson, which has a mass because it also interacts with the Higgs field. There is no limit that its mass be greater or less than those of the other particles'; it depends on how their interactions with the field work. By the way, here's a metaphor I like for how a field gives a particle mass. Compare throwing a ball at a given speed underwater vs in the air. In the water it will sink more for a given horizontal distance. The horizontal distance is like motion in space; the vertical distance is like motion in time. For less dense particle, the particle falls more over a given distance in space (because it is slowed down a lot). That's basically what mass means: moving through the field forces you to spend time (vertical distance in this case) to cover space (horizontal distance). Whereas a 'massless' particle would be one that doesn't interact at all with water, and passes through it unaffected. (It's not a perfect model. There's nothing like 'gravity' acting on particles in this way. But I think it's a reasonably intuitive idea of what a 'field giving a particle mass' could mean.)

Thanks for the summary! I wonder if you could eli5: I thought the Higgs was what gave other particles mass? How can it be heavier than the particles it gives mass to?

harshreality 5y ago

It's the Higgs field that gives particles mass. https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Higgs-particles-mass https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Hi...

felipellrocha 5y ago
Oh, sure, sure. What is the field?
- ajkjk 5y ago
  It is just one of the fields. The one whose interactions give particles mass. Modern physics has been working on finding and naming all of them.
  - ericbarrett 5y ago
    It gives some particles some mass. I had to look it up, because I'm no physicist, but e.g. most of a proton's mass comes from the strong force binding energy of its quarks.
    - ajkjk 5y ago
      That's true. I should have specified, fundamental particles. Although we're not sure about neutrinos.

gus_massa 5y ago

> I thought the Higgs was what gave other particles mass? Sorta yes, but it's more complicated. > How can it be heavier than the particles it gives mass to? There are a few bad explanations about the Higgs boson floating around. I hate all of them. I wish I can write a good one, but it's very difficult task. One of the explanations is the "prime minister" analogy, that says that the usual particles are like a prime minister, and the Higgs bosons are like the press reporters that follow the prime minister around. So even if the prime minister has no mass, the big bundle of the prime minister and the journalist has mass. In this explanation it's difficult to imagine why the mass of the bundle is smaller than the mass of each journalist. [Did I already said that I hate this explanation?] Oversimplifying toooo much: The idea is that the usual particles have something that look like mass because they bounce against the Higgs boson. They don't absorb the Higgs boson. They are not surrounded by Higgs bosons. They just bounce against a Higgs boson from time to time, and that somehow cause that they look like particles with mass. It's weird, very weird. The analogy does not give an intuitive explanation, but this can be formalized and the equations model the experiment accurately. But actually, the usual particles are not bouncing against Higgs boson, they are bouncing against the non-zero vacuum expectation value Higgs field. What is the Higgs field? What is the vacuum expectation value? Why it is not zero like in most fields? Those are hard questions! I watched the video in Encyclopædia Britannica linked in the sibling comment, and it's quite good. I hope it makes thing more clear than my explanation.

Tomte 5y ago
> There are a few bad explanations about the Higgs boson floating around. I hate all of them. What's your opinion on the PBS spacetime explanation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixAljyfdqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixAljyfdqU I've discovered the channel only recently, and have been binge-watching since.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  It's a nice explanation. I'll compare this video with https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Higgs-particles-mass https://www.britannica.com/video/185531/explanation-field-Hi... that was linked in a sibling comment by harshreality. The PBS video: * Has more technical stuff, so I'd recommend to see the other video first. * I like that it explain chirality. It's very important for this subject. * I don't like that they say that massless particles "experience no time". It's a common idea floating around, but it cause more misinterpretations than what it helps in the explanations. * They explain hypercharge. It's really important, but I'd hide under the carpet because there are too many things to explain. * In particular the circle in 5:22 is misleading/wrong. IIRC it's not a circle (aka U(1)), it's a magic double sphere (aka SU(2)). A circle is a nice representation, but they put a "real" and a "imaginary" axis in the graph, as it were actually the circle in the complex plane. This part is also important, and specialist love it because spontaneous symmetry breaking is so unusual and weird, but I'd just hid it under the carpet too. * The idea that the "spin constantly flips back and forth" is wrong. The spin is stable. For example the left handed (L) version of the electron and the right handed (R) version have spin 1/2. If you take a particle with spin +1/2 in one direction, the L and R version "flips back and forth" but when you measure the spin again in the same direction you still get +1/2, because the spin does not change. What "flips back and forth" is the direction. The idea is very similar to what is explained in the video in Britannica. If you mix different amounts of L and R with spin +1/2 in one direction, you can get a particle that has spin +1/2 in that direction and any speed you like because the speed is something like the average of both speeds. The Higgs field somehow keep the L and R version together, instead of them flying away in oposite directions. For this part I strongly prefer how it is explained in the video in Britannica. It's a nice video, but they should fix the part about spin flipping. (And perhaps hide the some details, but this is a personal preference.)

evanb 5y ago

The Higgs is like the water in the ocean. Particles are like boats. Some boats have sleek hulls and so the water doesn't slow them down too much. These are particles without much mass. Some boats have a few barnacles on their hulls. These are particles with more mass. The analogy is imperfect: if you give a boat a single push it will come to a stop, losing energy to the water; if you give a particle a push through the Higgs field it keeps going, it is not possible to give your momentum to the vacuum.

ajkjk 5y ago

Particles interact with the Higgs field. This gives them masses based on the strength and nature of their interaction. The Higgs field also has a quanta, a Boson, which has a mass because it also interacts with the Higgs field. There is no limit that its mass be greater or less than those of the other particles'; it depends on how their interactions with the field work. By the way, here's a metaphor I like for how a field gives a particle mass. Compare throwing a ball at a given speed underwater vs in the air. In the water it will sink more for a given horizontal distance. The horizontal distance is like motion in space; the vertical distance is like motion in time. For less dense particle, the particle falls more over a given distance in space (because it is slowed down a lot). That's basically what mass means: moving through the field forces you to spend time (vertical distance in this case) to cover space (horizontal distance). Whereas a 'massless' particle would be one that doesn't interact at all with water, and passes through it unaffected. (It's not a perfect model. There's nothing like 'gravity' acting on particles in this way. But I think it's a reasonably intuitive idea of what a 'field giving a particle mass' could mean.)