When the physicists at CERN in Europe more-or-less confirmed the discovery of the Higgs particle this past July 4, it made a big splash with the press (well . . . as big as a splash as a scientific discovery can make these day; just under the magnitude of Lady Gaga’s meat dress). The Higgs particle completed the picture of the sub-atomic world that has evolved over many decades into today’s Standard Model of particle physics. It helps to explain how and why some things in the universe have “mass”, i.e. the quality that requires a bit of force to initiate movement (relative movement — don’t forget Einstein here) of something with mass, continuing force to cause acceleration, and an opposing force to slow it down (i.e., the quality of inertia or momentum).

Well that’s nice, the typical educated layperson might say. So now we have photons that give us light and magnetism, electrons that give us electrical charge, gluons to hold the nuclei of atoms together, neutrinos that don’t do much of anything, and now Higgs particles to make certain stuff “massive”. Just peachy. If you’re really into it, you might also know that W and Z bosons help radioactive stuff to keep on glowing. That’s groovy (even if you don’t want to wear a radium watch these days — I actually had one as a kid!). But what is different because of all this? The world is still mostly the world we’ve always known; in a metaphysical sense, the world appears to be composed of a huge (if not infinite) void, with lots of little bullet-like things zipping around in it (photon, electrons, protons, various other fermions and bosons, now including the Higgs particle). Right?

Hmmm. If you stopped and read further in the more detailed articles about the Higgs discovery, you would know that the Higgs particle itself really isn’t all that important. The reason that the boffins are so interested in it is that reflects the existence of a “Higgs field”, a type of energy field that exists everywhere in equal strength (i.e., a “scalar field”, a field that imposes a quality as opposed to a directional force, as with magnetic fields). This field gives mass-containing “massive” particles (like the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, along with electrons, and even the ghostly neutrino) their “massive characteristics”; i.e. the tendency to need force to start moving relative to something else. And once moving, to require an opposing force to stop that relative movement. Somehow, this field constantly interacts with massive stuff (in quantum amounts defined by the Higgs particle — i.e., via “virtual Higgs particles”), and makes it act and respond to forces in appropriate ways.

That’s actually a rather profound notion. What it says  »  continue reading …