What Imbues the Higgs Boson with its Mass?

[G Anthony]

Now, if that other big unfalsifiable massive particle we call the Higgs Boson is the particle that imbues all other particles with their mass, what imbues the Higgs Boson with its mass? Higgs theorists are pulling their "pud". The Higgs is an ad hoc addendum that is a poor band-aid for the kink it was supposed to fix. Just what was that, anyway? Oh yeah, no explanation of "mass" in the standard model. Higgs is not really part of the standard model (yet). If the Higgs is not found, they will simply add in another ad hoc splint. The standard model will not collapse. Eventually, they'll get it right, though, I'll bet.

 

Funny, there is no explanation of the origin of gravity in GR either, only that it exists mathematically associated with mass. Why cannot we be satisfied with two sides to the same coin? Yin and Yang? If mass and gravity are two ways of looking at the same thing, is it not futile to try to merge them into one - when they are NOT one? OR, if they are already merged as best they can be?

 

This implies quantum and GR are just "so" - two facets of the samereality. If we try to merge the two, we shall go blind. The GUT or TOE is afantasy. What if I am right? Millions, perhaps billions more will be spent pursuing Harvey down his rabbit hole. We will get just a mouthful of mud

 

Much less than mass, there is no implicit validated account of gravity in the standard model of particle physics either. If there is a Higgs boson and Higgs field, it should be possible to derive the existence of the full fledged macroscopic gravitational field from them by means of the "correspondence principle". Then we shall have quantum gravity. Nah! Too easy. On the other hand . . .

 

But, as far as other unfalsifiable new hypothetical heavy bosons are concerned - try Alan Guth's "inflaton" particle: A hyper-massive excited particle in a humongously excited "inflaton field" that cannot be distinguished from gravity itself, except by its degree of excitation.

 

Guth says that suddenly, it decays. But, it decays into daughter particles and these then decay. Some of this decay debris has a long half-life. And enormous mass. The rest decays into matter and energy as we know it. But, the long half life particles remain as ultra-massive black holes. These decay, not via Hawking radiation, but by virtue of their intense infinitely deep singular gravitational fields that cause them to erupt into this same universe (somewhere "else"). There must be such a "process" involved.

 

They spew out smaller black holes and matter/energy detritus like a Roman candle, (The Big Barf.) Because of dependence on random processes and/or temperature, the daughter black holes they generate this way should follow a "normal" or "Poisson" distribution, perhaps. Statistically, this might be verified. Yet, it would take time for these BHs to start gathering in more matter to form full fledged galaxies. Some additional BHs may then form by accretion in the expected way.

 

Perhaps this process would indeed result in very ancient super-massive BH masses following a Poisson distribution. If I was a mathematical physicist, I am sure I could derive it. But, I am just a modeler.

 

Note that this process will result in sufficient inhomogeneity without invokingacoustic anomalies, quantum instabilities or other forms of additionalturbulence to give the energy/mass distribution we see today, especially in theCMB.

 

Now for Black-Hole existence: the singularity case of a mass with radius r = 0 is different, however. If one asks that the solution set to the simultaneous homogeneous nonlinear partial differential equations in GR be valid for all r,one runs into a true physical singularity, or gravitational singularity, at the origin. To see that this is a true singularity one must look at quantities that are independent of the choice of coordinates. One such important quantity is the Kretschmann invariant which says that at r = 0 the curvature blows up (becomes infinite) indicating the presence of a singularity. At this point, the metric, and space-time itself, is no longer well-defined, but not undefined.

 

For a long time it was thought that such a solution set was non-physical. However, a greater understanding of general relativity led to the realizationthat such singularities were a generic feature of the GR theory and not just an exotic special case. Such solutions are now believed to actually exist and are termed black-holes. Because they certainly are gravitational singularities, they must have a unique gravitational field profile. By simple analytic geometry, they must be distinguished by a hyperbolic (1/r) fall-off in their gravitational field strength. This fact is currently being ignored.

 

F= GMm/kr, k = 1m (S.I., for dimensional integrity) means black-hole gravity falls off hyperbolically, not parabolically as according to Newton. This F equation is fully Newtonian, however. It just focuses on black-holes as being unique, and, of course, they are. Note that k = 1m is an explicit reminder that we deal with a gravitational singularity here.

 

Mordechai Milgrom is a reputable careful worker. His data are used to support the idea of Dark Matter (DM), not MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). Not by him, though, he still teaches MOND. Where do we get Dark Matter from GR or from the standard theory of particle physics? Where?

 

WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are even more hypothetical and unfalsifiable than DM or MOND. DM itself is just a patch used to fill in the blanks in the Friedmann model. If Einstein can derive Newton from GR, then one can derive the hyperbolic (1/kr) black-hole galactic gravitational field using the right assumptions about black-holes. These would be interesting in themselves. . .

 

Unfalsifiable hypotheses cannot be used to refute facts, as forum respondents often do. TeVeS theory is such an hypothesis like quantum/GR hybrids all are. They have never predicted one single unique item and no such prediction has ever been verified. A theory that does not predict competently is not a theory and does not deserve the attention of mathematicians nor scientists.

 

All math, all science, is metaphor. All language is ultimately just metaphor, including (or especially) Scripture. It is utterly impossible to fully capture reality with any kind of human language. Professionals' unawareness of this objection is what many people mean when they claim that scientists are insufferably arrogant and grossly naive. These critics go too far, though. Then they claim that science itself is just Myth. They create this Myth. Let us endeavor NOT to do so ourselves.

No cynic is happy.

[ajb]

Now, if that other big unfalsifiable massive particle we call the Higgs Boson is the particle that imbues all other particles with their mass, what imbues the Higgs Boson with its mass?

 

The definition of the mass of a particle in quantum field theory is not trivial. The most direct way to define a mass is via the propagator, and in particular mass can be defined as a pole in the propagator. In the context of perturbation theory you can write down the propagators analytically at various loop orders and "read off" the mass. This is not so easy in a non-perturbative setting, but then the notion of a particle becomes obscure here anyway.

 

However, I must point out that the standard model does not predict the mass of the Higgs. Even worse than this, the Higgs mass is not protected by any symmetry of the standard model and so is stable with respect to quantum corrections. This is basically the standard modelhierarchy problem.

 

So it turns out that we can resolve the problem of radiative corrections by extending the standard model to have an N = 1 supersymmetry. This model is known as the minimal supersymmetric standard model, or MSSM for short. Importantly, in the MSSM the Higgs mass is not a free parameter, it is set by all the couplings. The upshot is that the Higgs mass must be less than the Z mass.

[G Anthony]

The Z boson is the last particle needed to fill out the Standard Model. So, where does the Higgs boson come from if not from an ad hoc addendum to the Standard Model the purpose of which is to explain the phenomenon of "mass". That a version of supersymmetry can be invoked to "predict" the Higgs is not surprising. But, that this "mass" is not actually explained by the existence of the Higgs, but only certain "kinds" of mass, is suspect. The success of Alan Guth's Inflation Theory should be instructive. An excited state of an inflaton field gave rise to an inflaton "virtual" particle by means of its intensely high energy state that was much more probable than lower energy states because of the zero point cut-off. It appears that the inflaton field is an excited state of the vacuum (the Einstein Aether) called a "false vacuum". It and its associated particle came into existence as a probabilistic statistical inevitability. It possessed a gravitational field which may have been identical to the inflaton field itself. What would an excited gravitational field be like? In the meta-space implied by the existence of an inflaton field and particle, might not the excited gravitational field have rather different properties relative to a "ground state" gravitational field? This excited gravitational field engendered the whole mass and energy of the entire universe. An excited field like it might create the Higgs particle and imbue the particles with which this field can interact with some form of "mass".

 

I have suggested that, given the correct assumptions and boundary conditions, a gravitational field (if it emanates from a singular infinitely dense point mass like a black hole) could operate with a hyperbolic attractive force. This rather than the usual inverse square or "exponential" force. Its fundamental basis for being could be a two dimensional version of our 3-D world, like the holographic principle implies that the information in a given volume of space can be represented on its surface. A 2-D gravitational field could be hyperbolic in nature without stretching general relativity too far. Two dimensions does not necessarily imply "flat". A hyperbolic gravitational field would be quantum normalizable and could fit with quantum mechanics/dynamics to allow quantum theoretical treatment of gravity and "mass" as an expression of the Einstein Aether - an acknowledgement of the fluid dynamics analogy in general relativity. In other words, might it be profitable to consider the Higgs boson and field from the perspective of general relativity with a few quantum principles mixed in to give a sort of quantum relativity?

 

If the mass of the Higgs should be less than the Z, and the Z is about as massive as an iron atom, may it not be asking a bit much from the CERN super-collider? If the Higgs is not found, would not a brand new band-aid be found to slap onto the standard model? And, how can there legitimately be more than one "standard" model? Are we not formulating whole models as ad hoc fixes for the flaws we perceive? Like weathermen, we choose the model we prefer for the purpose we desire.

[ajb]

The Z boson is the last particle needed to fill out the Standard Model. So, where does the Higgs boson come from if not from an ad hoc addendum to the Standard Model the purpose of which is to explain the phenomenon of "mass". T

 

Most physicists will agree that the Higgs is rather ad hoc. The Higgs does not come from any seemingly deep mathematical principle, this makes it rather "ugly".

[G Anthony]

Thanks AJB. I was starting to think I was beginning to see double from the mushroom sauce I just ate with my breakfast steak. Maybe I need a rest. I am starting to hallucinate from my intellectual diet of cosmology. Nah! I am not hooked. I can quit anytime!