Starship Asterisk*

The Higgs particle got the Nobel Prize for physics this year. Or rather, Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded it.

Ann

The Higgs boson well worth the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Ann wrote:
The Higgs particle got the Nobel Prize for physics this year.
Or rather, Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded it.

The prize should have gone to Peter Higgs at the University of Edinburgh (ED-in-burr-ə): Instead, it went to Peter Higgs at the University of edin-BURG:

I imagine that if you put neutrons under sufficient pressure/temperature, they'll decompose into Higgs bosons. Perhaps that is what's going on in the center of neutron stars? Add a proton to an atom, you get a different element; add a neutron, you get a heavier isotope. Seems neutrons may carry more Higgs bosons? A black hole could be composed of Higgs bosons, with the rest of the neutron left behind. Since mass/gravity is a distortion of space-time, I wonder what it is about the Higgs boson that disturbs the surrounding space-time. Since every particle is supposed to have an anti-particle, is there a Higgs anti-boson? I guess it is its own anti-particle, what with its zero spin, zero charge, zero color charge, zero baryon number, adding up to a quantum number of zero...what exactly is it? How can something with those properties distort space-time?!

Psnarf wrote:
Since mass/gravity is a distortion of space-time, I wonder what it is about the Higgs boson that disturbs the surrounding space-time. Since every particle is supposed to have an anti-particle, is there a Higgs anti-boson? I guess it is its own anti-particle, what with its zero spin, zero charge, zero color charge, zero baryon number, adding up to a quantum number of zero...what exactly is it? How can something with those properties distort space-time?!

It is energy/momentum that distorts space-time.

Higgs simply locks up some of that energy into a form (mass) whereby it can no longer be easily dissipated by the expansion of the Universe.

Psnarf wrote:Seems neutrons may carry more Higgs bosons?

The Higgs mechanism gives mass to elementary particles. The elementary particles the neutron is composed of are the up- and down-quarks. In the standard model of particle physics, they get their mass via the Higgs mechanism. However, the masses of the three quarks only amounts to about 1 percent of the total neutron mass. The rest somehow comes from the energy of the gluons that bind the three quarks into the neutron. But this mechanism is not fully understood yet. Electrons, on the other hand get their mass via the Higgs mechanism. But again, the masses of the electrons constitute about 1 per mill of the mass of an atom.

Psnarf wrote:Since mass/gravity is a distortion of space-time, I wonder what it is about the Higgs boson that disturbs the surrounding space-time. Since every particle is supposed to have an anti-particle, is there a Higgs anti-boson? I guess it is its own anti-particle, what with its zero spin, zero charge, zero color charge, zero baryon number, adding up to a quantum number of zero...what exactly is it? How can something with those properties distort space-time?!

The Higgs particle has a mass and hypercharge but no electric charge. It also interacts, by construction, with all particles that have a mass.

As neufer said, it's energy and momentum (and some other things) that distort spacetime. In principle the Higgs, like any other elementary particle, can distort spacetime. But since the mass of all elementary particles is tiny, their gravitational interactions are negligible when particle physics is concerned. When gravity is concerned, we are dealing with planets, stars and galaxies and, thus, the masses of the elementary particles do not matter. Experimentally, these two fields of physics are almost disconnected. In theory, a unified theory of particle physics and gravity is lacking as well.

Unified theory Wouldn't that be called "Life" But then, who knows what that is ::insert shrugged shoulders smilie here::

Beyond wrote:Unified theory Wouldn't that be called "Life"

In this context unified theory refers to nothing more and nothing less than a unified treatment of gravity and the other three forces of nature. This unification is similar to electromagnetism, which allowed for a single unified treatment of electric- and magnetic phenomena.

Several people spent their lives trying to find one. For them, it certainly could be called life.

Markus Schwarz wrote:

Beyond wrote:Unified theory Wouldn't that be called "Life"

In this context unified theory refers to nothing more and nothing less than a unified treatment of gravity and the other three forces of nature. This unification is similar to electromagnetism, which allowed for a single unified treatment of electric- and magnetic phenomena.

Several people spent their lives trying to find one. For them, it certainly could be called life.

Seems more like frustration, to me.