I'm duh? On the LHC..

[platobird]

I wrote this elsewhere and got zippo in answers. Isn't there someone out there that can de-fog my brain?

I'm at least eager to learn.

The principle reason for the LHC was to find the higgs boson. The 'particle' that causes mass predicted by the mathematical equations of Peter Higgs. Now what I'm not comprehending, is? Is this particle in our dimensions, but just too minuscule to find any other way? Or is it in 'another' dimension only jumping into ours when protons are smashed to smithereens?


quote...."According to theory, the Higgs mechanism works as a medium that exists everywhere in space. Particles gain mass by interacting with this medium."

What 'medium'? And where the hell is this 'medium'!!? Sounds reminiscent of the aether theory for heavens sake. Wasn't that discarded years ago?

[EthanT]

Originally Posted by platobird

I wrote this elsewhere and got zippo in answers. Isn't there someone out there that can de-fog my brain?

I'm at least eager to learn.

The principle reason for the LHC was to find the higgs boson. The 'particle' that causes mass predicted by the mathematical equations of Peter Higgs. Now what I'm not comprehending, is? Is this particle in our dimensions, but just too minuscule to find any other way? Or is it in 'another' dimension only jumping into ours when protons are smashed to smithereens?


quote...."According to theory, the Higgs mechanism works as a medium that exists everywhere in space. Particles gain mass by interacting with this medium."

What 'medium'? And where the hell is this 'medium'!!? Sounds reminiscent of the aether theory for heavens sake. Wasn't that discarded years ago?

Hi Platobird,

I think the key is to realize that the Higg's Particle is the quanta of the Higg's Field. It's really the Higg's Field that is fundamental here and what the physicists care about. How strongly other particles interact with the Higg's field determines the amount of mass, or inertia, they will have. This all takes place in spacetime. No extra dimensions required.

I think this site is pretty good. It's not always in layman's terms, but it's got some pretty decent low tech explanations of many modern topics (especially related to the LHC)


http://profmattstrassler.com/article...article/360-2/

Enjoy!

Ok, so, what is a particle?
A quantum field’s waves cannot be of arbitrary intensity. The least-intense possible wave that a field can have is called a particle, and it often behave in rough accordance with your intuitive notion of “particle”, moving in a straight line and bouncing indivisibly off of things, etc., which is why we give it that name.

In the case of the electric field, its particles are called “photons”; they represent the dimmest possible flash. Your eye absorbs light one photon at a time (though it typically waits for several photons to arrive before sending a signal to your brain.) A laser produces very intense waves, but if you shield a laser with a screen so that only a tiny fraction of the light gets through, you will find, if you shield it enough, that the light passes through the screen in little blips — single photons — all of them equally dim.

I kinda get it. So the Higgs particle is the smallest possible Higgs wave, and a Higgs wave is a ripple in the Higgs field.

[platobird]

Thanks Ethan,

Your link does lead to one of the better attempted explanations. I'll definitely mull it over.

Beyond that, I'm rather pleased that many people are checking this question thread out, then just as soon checking out! There's a whole lot of people who find this Higgs Field confusing , including Quantum Physicists.

Thanks.

[wildewurst]

Ok, I'll have a try... You probably know, that there are several types of interaction between particles... e.g. the electromagnetic force between two charged object, or gravitational force between two massive objects (like earth and moon).

We imagine these interactions as fields (e.g. the electromagnetic field) that communicate the forces between two interacting particles. Now from quantum mechanics we know that these fields must be quantized. And those 'quanta' are imagined as so-called virtual particles. Imagine two charged particles interacting electromagnetically with each other: In our model, those particles exchange so-called virtual photons. Very(!) simply speaking, you can imagine this as if the two particles shoot little billiard balls (the virtual photons) at each other, which causes them to change their respective velocitiy, for example.

Why do we speak of virtual particles? Because we cannot observe them directly. Virtual particles that act in terms of a "communicator" between real particles are more or less a mathematical construct and not observable. However, we know if there is a field which "uses" virtual particles for interactions between real particles, it should be possible to also produce the real counterparts of the virtual particles.

We can do this by exciting the field, that is - simply speaking - pumping the energy in the field than is equivalent to the real particles mass. This is done e.g at the LHC. It was proposed, that a "Higgs-field" exists and permeates space. The virtual particle corresponding to the Higgs-field is the Higgs-boson. By exciting the Higgs-field, we should be able to produce a real Higgs-boson. Since this real Higgs is very heavy, a lot of energy is needed, so we could not produce it before LHC's times.

The same has done before for lighter particles by the way... Like for the W+/W- and Z boson of the weak interaction. No other dimensions needed, at least not in the "Star Trek-sense".

Hope I could enlight you a bit Tried to keep it very simple so I might not be completely correct from a physicists point of view. However it should be correct enough to get a rough idea.

[EthanT]

I see wildewurst had to go and mention virtual particles, lol.

Anyhow, VPs have caused a lot of confusion and it seems like Prof Matt Stressler has also produced a very nice description of those guys that even the die-hards over on physicsforums.com have seemed to agree upon!

Virtual Particles: What are they? | Of Particular Significance

[wildewurst]

Hi Ethan,

thanks for the link. Probably the best explanation of virtual particles I've read so far. Anyhow I think once it's clear, what is meant by 'virtual particle', it's ok to name them this way and it also make sense for several reasons.

I also remember being confused about the concept before I learned what all this means. But this was not because of the name, but because the concept is usually not properly explained.

Cheers!

[Scott]

I seem to remember the CERN site having some good info at various levels. I know they have some geared for High School level students and up from there.

[EthanT]

Originally Posted by wildewurst

Hi Ethan,

thanks for the link. Probably the best explanation of virtual particles I've read so far. Anyhow I think once it's clear, what is meant by 'virtual particle', it's ok to name them this way and it also make sense for several reasons.

I also remember being confused about the concept before I learned what all this means. But this was not because of the name, but because the concept is usually not properly explained.

Cheers!

There was some pretty funny history to all this on physicsforums.com. Pretty much the consensus was that virtual particles don't really exist, and that's all there is to it. They're just a mathematical artifact as a result of using an approximation scheme - a perturbation series. And, Feynman diagrams, each of which are a visual depiction of a term in the perturbation series, just aren't meant to be taken that literally.

Well, a couple guys over there starting email some of the bigger names in physics about this. To the surprise of many, most of them responded back and you should have seemed the mix of repsonses. It gave the general impression that the top minds in physics have very little agreement on just what a virtual particle is. (I'll see if I can't track down that thread over there and will link it here if I can)

Well, I don't know if Prof Matt Strassler's description came before all this, but it seemed to clear up a lot over there on the issue and help build at least some consensus on the issue.

Anyhow, glad you enjoyed it!

[EthanT]

Here's that one particular thread on virtual particles I was thinking about. Has a guy called Kexue getting frustrated by the answers to his questions so he begins emailing one physicist after another.

It's kind of interesting if you have the time, but it's a long thread.

Are virtual particles really there?

I think it demonstrates what Platobird mentioned above and is summed up well by the following Richard Feynman Quote:

"I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics"

[David R]

The aether theory never actually went out of science. I'm not into the technicalities of the science so i make no claims here. But Einstein talked about an aether.

The Michelson/Morley experiment on electromagnetism was said to get rid of the aether idea.

There's a physicist called Frank Wilchek who talked about there being an Aether some years ago. I think it has something to do with Quantum foam. Not sure what he may have said about Higgs.

My simple understanding is that the Higgs particle is a kind of bridge between all the smallest subatomic particles science has so far detected and a kind of chi energy which is even smaller and more subtle than these known particles.