Dan Minette [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
>
> In GR, matter affects the curvature of space, and the
> curvature of space dictates the motion of objects.
Complete tangent here...
There's some recent kafuffle that Higgs bosons may have been spotted.
These guys are the fallout of one hypothesis for how the seemingly
obvious property of mass may be exhibited by the various other
particles. It took some digging to find laymans explanations beyond that
statement, but happily enough there was a challenge to write just such a
beast: http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs.html
...
Basic summary, insofar as I understand it:
Fields are everywhere - for example, if you have a proton, its
electromagnetic field extends from the proton to all points in the
universe. Admittedly, it's pretty weak most places since the strength of
the field falls off with the inverse of the square of the distance, but
it's there. The field is experienced by another particle that interacts
using the same force - in this case, electromagnetism, and for example,
an electron. The electron can be used as a test particle to examine the
field at various points in space and map the strength and direction of
the field.
The Higgs field is still a field - it exists at all points in space -
but differs in some ways. In this case, however, what we use as a test
particle is anything that exhibits what we would call mass. The observed
effect is its inertia (resistance to being accelerated), caused by the
degree of interaction between the particle and the ubiquitous Higgs
field.
A consequence of this hypothesis is that because of the wave/particle
duality predictions of QM, given that we predict a Higgs field there
should exist a corresponding Higgs particle. Just as a well localized
wave disturbance in an electromagnetic field is observed as a photon
carrying EM energy, a well localized disturbance in the Higgs field
should be observable as a Higgs particle, or boson (or "particle with
integral spin", like all force carriers) carrying mass - that is, it
will be observable as a massive particle.
Thanks to E=mc^2, the more massive a particle is the more energy we have
to pump into an experiment to liberate the potential field/particle from
its usual behavior and get it good and visible. So a Higgs boson will
only be observable by large particle accelerators.
Anything close to accurate?
...
Anyway, my question: does anyone have any idea how the concept of mass
as caused by the Higgs field maps to GR's notion of mass causing
distortions in spacetime? The "billiard balls on a rubber sheet" analogy
make perfect sense to me until we rip the masses out of the picture as a
fundamental property of matter. Help!
Joshua
