5 ms·
The Higgs mechanism feels indeed like a hack, but the ( at the moment not significant ) clues, that we have an enhanced photon ratio gives some hope, I think. (
by yk 14y ago
The Higgs mechanism feels indeed like a hack, but the ( at the moment not significant ) clues, that we have an enhanced photon ratio gives some hope, I think. ( Likewise the absence of an signal in the tau-tau channel.)
On the other hand, we have good reason to believe in the graviton, since gravity is a field and if all fields are fundamentally quantum then we need a field-quanta, the graviton.
For dark matter we actually know quite a lot from the cosmic microwave background and from astronomical observations like the bullet cluster. And these point in the direction of a kind of particle. ( Dark energy is of course more of a hack.)
- oelewapperke 14y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding something, but the Higgs Boson does not have anything to do with gravity, with one curious exception. But it's "main" job is inertia. The Higgs Boson get us one step closer to explaining why it takes more energy to start a proton moving than to start an electron moving. It does not explain them attracting eachother. The one curious problem with Higgs' Boson not being related to gravity is that for some unknown and currently unexplained reason, inertial mass is equal (except for a constant factor) to gravitic mass.