Image: CERN
Join us below at 4:30 P.M. Eastern time on Thursday, July 12, for a live 30-minute online chat with physicist Michael Tuts of Columbia University, who will provide context for last week's landmark announcement from CERN, a Switzerland-based lab for particle physics, about the discovery of a particle that could well be the Higgs boson. We invite you to submit questions in advance in the comments section at the bottom of this page.
Tuts, the U.S. operations program manager for the ATLAS detector at the LHC, will answer your questions during the chat about what comes next—how physicists will attempt to confirm that the new particle is indeed the Higgs, and how its properties may point to new physics. We will turn on the capacity to log in to the chat box below mid-day.
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15 Comments
Add CommentHow likely is it that this boson is not the Higgs boson?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we still don't have the technology to directly detect it let alone manipulate it, is this discovery useful to anyone or just a mass of data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Can we be sure of this discovery on theoretical level, while Millennium Problem 5, concerning the Yang-Mills consistency and "mass gap", is still unsolved?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. If photons do not interact with the mass-creating Higgs field, how can they be deflected by gravitational fields?
3. Can the Higgs boson help resolve the vacuum energy paradox and the so-called vacuum catastrophe?
Photons follow the shape of space and that is what precieved as gravtational fields.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack.123 said: "Photons follow the shape of space and that is what is perceived as gravitational fields".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks, but you just quote General Relativity, which has not been successfully combined with QM so far.
How do the photons perceive the shape of abstract spacetime and how is that abstract shape formed in the presence of real masses formed by the material Higgs field? I've just put some leisurely but serious and deep questions for which I haven't seen any answer except for my own speculations...
Well here goes.Photons follow the curvature of space because they are the base unit of mass.Put enough units in one place at one time and you have mass.Mass itself is an illusion it's all just energy.It is Higgs that determines the threshold of each unit.There must be some kind of symmetry from Higgs that decides what each particle is.Once a collection of energy is large enough it begins to displace space.Apparently space and mass can't occupy the same area at the same time.Time too is just an illusion,it's just the motion of energy-mass though space.The faster something moves the graeter the interaction with space.Where photons are concernered the interaction is below the Higgs threshold.But there is an interaction becuse light does something called redshifting,this is the drag caused by it's passage though space,and this is why light follows the line that space dictates.Now why the relationship between gravity and redshifting can't be figured out I don't know?Hope this helped.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf photons are the base units of mass, then there either there would be no mass or the theory must be wrong. This is because the photons are supposed to be mass-less. Putting enough zeros make any great number, but remains zero. If mass is an illusion, then why it is being used in physics except explaining it like a mirage? If time too is an illusion, space-time should also be imaginary. Further, there cannot be any "just the motion of energy-mass though space".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy this whole excitement about searching blind-folded in the dark room for the black cat that does not exist?
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E=mc^2 says that there is a given amount of energy in mass,and a photon is an unit of energy not zero.Thus a photon is not truly massless,just below the limit that can be called mass. I said mass is just an illution,because it's all energy with some of it clumped in to what is called mass.That doesn't mean it isn't real.It's just the way it's worded.Time doesn't happen unless something is passing through space,and or space is flowing over it.It is this displacement space we call time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisE=mc^2 says that there is a given amount of energy in mass,and a photon is an unit of energy not zero.Thus a photon is not truly massless,just below the limit that can be called mass. I said mass is just an illution,because it's all energy with some of it clumped in to what is called mass.That doesn't mean it isn't real.It's just the way it's worded.Time doesn't happen unless something is passing through space,and or space is flowing over it.It is this displacement space we call time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy speculation was that the Higgs field energy (or the concentration of the bosons) must be related to the curvature, and the photon's energy should interact with it according to some minimum principle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill no consistent answer to my questions 1,2,3 (cf.esp. "mass gap"), or those of 04:45 PM 7/14/12. Photons do interact and don't? There is spacetime but time is material? Even E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4 may be violated.
Far from TOE. The Higgs is just in line with the electroweak theory now. No strong force and no gravity yet (if ever possible).
I agree with you Infinoe.There must be a lower symmetry acting on the Higgs field where gravity and the interaction of photons with space coincide.Perhaps in another dimension yet undefined.Because it is so small no experiment may ever prove it.But I think the entanglement of atoms may be a clue to what's really going on.There must be a connection of atoms and photons in this state and gravity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack. 123
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresence of mass or energy (photons) brings about a curvature, a distortion of space-time, which we interpret as gravity as per GR. However, if we treat space as abstract implying NIL physicality then distortion shall be of what? If space physicality is zero, its distortion should also be zero in substance. Kindly do not speak of mathematical abstractions which lead to curvature of space-time.
Basically, there is no difference in energy and matter except that matter carries mass. An electron is a localized bundle of energy (Photons) carrying mass. Have you some idea, what mechanism causes bundles of energies with endowment of differential masses to assume different matter particles -- electron, quarks, nutrions?
In response to vinodkumarsehgal,everything that I have said is speculation to what to my knowledge is going on.It would appear that the Higgs field creates a symmetry by which each particle that reaches a certain level of energy falls into slots or bundles.It is the amount of energy in any given slot that determines which particle it is.It is also at this point,the Higgs threshold,that particles are considered to have mass.It is also when space begins to be displaced.What space is has yet to be defined.But the drag that space causes on photons,red shifting, means space can't be zero in energy. Positive or negtive it must be something.I am not sure what you meant by mathematical abstractions?Please point out what you meant and if I have done it again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRef:13. vinodkumarsehgal _ You have commented,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Basically, there is no difference in energy and matter except that matter carries mass."
Here Technically and Mathematically,this is not correct presumptions, the Difference between Energy and Matter,is that ,MATTER has TWO major Components-
(1) Visible Matter which we see and feel and know.
(2) Invisible Matter which is Dark Matter, and is a property of INERTIA GRAVITY- Or can be seen EXPICITLY only in TIME REVERSAL 5 - 910/11 DIMENSIONAL SPACE TIME CLASSICAL SYMMETRY with a Time-Locked- Freeze.
At the same ENERGY COMPONENT,REQUIRES THE GRAVITATIONAL MATTER ENERGY AND INERTIA MATTER ENERGY to be taken into Account, under PHASE SPACE. ( Please read my Blogs in previous issues),it is condensed FORM, and has to be Researched patiently, word for word, and check Google,for connection's.
Contd. from Blog 15- Excuse Error on Lines 10,Read as - "REVERSAL IN 5 & - 9/10/11 COMBINED and integrated cosmologically geometrised "- DIMENSIONAL SPACE TIME CLASSICAL SYMMETRY,- with a Time-Locked- Freeze.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLINE 12- At the same Time.....