Higgs boson - a question

[Stu]

Simple answers please!

If the Higgs bosons can only be detected by something as powerful as the LHC, and decay very quickly, how can they be present in any sense in normal situations to cause mass?

My physics ended at A level so try and keep the answers intelligible to mere mortals

Stu

[JB80]

Define normal situations?

I mean it's not exactly a normal particle that does normal things.

[JulianO]

The Higgs is actually mostly a field thats everywhere - a bit like gravity except it isn't (as gravity is concentrated in mass). So most of the effects come from the Higgs field. If you excite the Higgs field, you can get it to give off a particle - the Higgs boson, just like if you excite EM fields you can get them to give off light.

[Stu]

Thanks both. To clarify, by normal situations I meant that to cause mass all the time, they must be present all the time.

My understanding, which was clearly wrong, was that mass was caused by the Higgs boson moving through the Higgs field. Julian's post corrects that. Still not sure I get how a boson is emitted, could you explain further?

Stu

[JulianO]

There is quite a good explanation given by Ian Sample.

Also this from

filmed today

[Stu]

Thanks Julian, will have a look a those tomorrow

Cheers

Stu

[Moonshane]

I read the book 'Massive' a while back - very entertaining and must read it again as most of it has fallen out of my ears as I have thought of new stuff since then.

[Stu]

Thanks Shane. Not heard of that one, will give it a go

Stu

[DarkStar7]

Could the Higgs field be due to the curvature of space-time at high energies that causes photons to bunch up and interact and become sluggish with their time slowing and becoming squashed up,turning them into first into gluons and then into a Higgs.

[JulianO]

Probably not...

[Moonshane]

I wonder if eventually the Higgs Field might enable a true absolute place/location to be confirmed.

[Hugechris]

Could the Higgs field be due to the curvature of space-time at high energies that causes photons to bunch up and interact and become sluggish with their time slowing and becoming squashed up,turning them into first into gluons and then into a Higgs.

No the standard model Higgs plays a role in defining how the photon comes about along with 3 other particles (the W+, W- and the Z0) as part of the the so called Electroweak theory and importantly due to the way the Higgs is hypothesised to interact it provides a way of generting inertial mass to all fundamental particles. The gluons of QCD are massless.

The standard model of particle phyiscs has yet to include a viable theory of gravity, so the graviational coupling of energy is not considered in the theory. This is mainly because the gravitaional effects are negligable compared to the distance scales and energies we can currently investigate so can be safely ignored in by the theorists for current predictions.

There are alot of questions that are still unanswered in particle physics, one of the biggest is integrating a quantum theory of gravity.

[jflowers]

Thought this article simplified things quite nicely...

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/03/12547980-the-higgs-boson-made-simple?lite

[Moonshane]

that's a great article. I like this bit:

The Guardian's Ian Sample demonstrates a variant of this analogy in a 4.5-minute video: Imagine a tray with ping-pong balls scattered on it. The balls roll freely around the empty tray. But then, if you spread a layer of sugar over the tray, the balls sitting on the piled-up sugar don't roll so easily. The grains of sugar introduce a kind of inertial "drag," and that's the kind of effect that the Higgs field supposedly has on particles with mass.

so if I understand this (very unlikely) everything has the potential to move at light speed but it's the Higgs Field which prevents it from doing so if it has mass?