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> Also a countertop swivel chair physicist, my understanding is that Higgs bosons are recruited as virtual particles all the time to bestow other particles thei
by lanza 3y ago
> Also a countertop swivel chair physicist, my understanding is that Higgs bosons are recruited as virtual particles all the time to bestow other particles their mass.
Physicist here: nope. The coupling between the Higgs field and other particle fields is what creates the phenomona of mass. The Higgs particle is just an excitation of that field.
Virtual particles aren't "real" in the same way that the first order Taylor series of sin(x) being x doesn't max x a real sinusoidal wave. All it does is let you make your calculations "close enough" for your accepted definition of "close enough."
- borissk 3y agoAren't both virtual and non-virtual particles non-real - in the sense that they are both excitation/waves of/in a field. With virtual particles just being smaller waves.
- tux3 3y agoThanks! So if I understood you right, whatever coupling does to the fields, it's something doesn't involve virtual Higgs, is that right? Is it fair to say that both virtual Higgs and 'real' Higgs are two types of excitations of that field, except that virtual particles can't be directly observed? I find the name virtual particles interesting, since they don't seem to be exactly the same kind of ripples as particles, and physicists frequently seem to disagree on how 'real' they are as a matter of interpretation
- lanza 3y agoVirtual particles are calculational tools. They aren’t concrete things the way you’re proposing them to be. They are closer in character to “completing the square” than they are a an actual physical object. They are great for trying to help human brains make concrete the details of the process. But again they are just artifacts of the way we do our computations. And the Higgs field is a particularly great example of this. If you shift a sin wave 90 degrees it becomes a cosine wave. If you don’t expand about the lowest energy of the Mexican top hot potential for the Higgs field it creates an entirely different description of the physical phenomena and virtual particles.
- ethbr0 3y ago> Mexican top hot potential To save someone else the trouble, no, that wasn't an autocorrect mistake on "Mexican." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking#Sombrero_potential https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breakin...
- denton-scratch 3y agoIt's not the "Mexican" bit that looks like a typo; it's the "top hot" part that jumps out.
- lanza 3y agoIt's just "Mexican hat" potential. The `hot` was a phone keyboard typo and writing `top` was just a mental typo.