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Old 8th January 2013, 11:07 AM   #841
Anders Lindman
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Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
That's correct.
Then the usual illustration of how particles moving through the Higgs field make them have mass is a bit misleading. The motion through the Higgs field is irrelevant for generating mass.

In this Fermilab video they even compare the Higgs field with water and claim that it is made of Higgs particles, just like how water is made of water molecules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIg1Vh7uPyw
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Old 8th January 2013, 12:20 PM   #842
sol invictus
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Originally Posted by Anders Lindman View Post
Then the usual illustration of how particles moving through the Higgs field make them have mass is a bit misleading. The motion through the Higgs field is irrelevant for generating mass.
I've never heard anyone make such a claim. Perhaps you took something too literally. Motion through the Higgs field is ill-defined, since the Higgs field doesn't have a restframe.

Quote:
In this Fermilab video they even compare the Higgs field with water and claim that it is made of Higgs particles, just like how water is made of water molecules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIg1Vh7uPyw
That analogy is useful for explaining the relation between Higgs field and Higgs particle, but it fails in this aspect. Analogies are never exact, or they wouldn't be analogies.
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Old 4th February 2013, 06:43 AM   #843
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Some recent news on the Higgs particle.

From: RÉSONAANCES: Twin Peaks in ATLAS:
Quote:
The ATLAS analyses in these channels return the best fit Higgs masses that differ by more than 3 GeV: 123.5 GeV for ZZ and 126.6 GeV for γγ, which is much more than the estimated resolution of about 1 GeV. The tension between these 2 results is estimated to be 2.7σ.
Some rather curious double vision. Some source of systematic error not properly corrected for?

However,
Quote:
One more news today is that ATLAS also began studying some differential observables related to the Higgs boson, which usually goes by the name of "spin determination". ... For spin zero the production angle should be isotropic (at the parton level, in the center-of-mass frame of the collision) while for higher spins some directions with respect to the beam axis could be preferred.
So far, there's no evidence of the beam directions making an imprint on the Higgs decays. It's enough to rule out a simple spin-2 model at 90%.

From: The first LHC protons run ends with new milestone | CERN press office
Quote:
Geneva, 17 December 2012. This morning CERN completed the first LHC proton run. The remarkable first three-year run of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator was crowned by a new performance milestone. The space between proton bunches in the beams was halved to further increase beam intensity. ...

To put this into context, of the 6 million billion proton-proton collisions generated by the LHC, the ATLAS and CMS experiments have each recorded around 5 billion collisions of interest over the last three years. Of these, only around 400 produced results compatible with the Higgs-like particle whose discovery was announced in July. ...

At the beginning of 2013, the LHC will collide protons with lead ions before going into a long maintenance stop until the end of 2014. Running will resume in 2015 with increased collision energy of 13 TeV and another increase in luminosity.
The LHC is currently doing proton-lead collisions, and when it shuts down, it will have some major upgrades over the next few years. Its particles' energy should go up by about a factor of 2, and its "luminosity" should also be increased.

That will help it get better statistics on Higgs-decay directionality, and also processes like
Higgs -> bottom-bottom
Higgs -> tau-tau
which are expected from the particle's making masses for the other Standard Model particles.

Bumping up the LHC's energy and luminosity will also be good for making supersymmetry-partner particles, or else pushing up their masses' lower limits.

I can't post links because I don't have enough posts. But it should be easy to find the originals for what I've posted, so I hope I don't seem like I'm guilty of plagiarism.
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Old 4th February 2013, 12:14 PM   #844
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I've had a lot of experience with Farsight's arguments.

Some of his arguments are a theologian's sorts of arguments, like treating Albert Einstein's work as sacred books that it would be wrong to depart from. Even though Einstein departed from Farsight's beliefs, like believing in a unified space-time and rejecting space-motion.

One can easily extend Farsight's "demonstration" of the nonexistence of time to "demonstrate" the nonexistence of space. One can also "demonstrate" that rainbows and clouds are solid objects with it, and also that gravity and electrostatic and magnetostatic fields do not exist.


As to Farsight's argument that the Higgs particle does not account for much of the Universe's mass, that's an irrelevant side issue. It makes the rest masses of all the other massive Standard-Model particles. I add that qualification between the photon and gluon stay massless, the state of every Standard-Model particle but the Higgs particle before electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism.

Hadrons are bound states, so their masses don't count as Standard-Model particle masses. Nucleons get most of their masses from color confinement. Their quarks and gluons cannot get more than about 10^(-15) m from each other without those particles' interactions getting superstrong. This means that those particles' wavefunctions cannot extend over a greater size, and thus that their masses should be about a few hundred MeV. Thus, the nucleons' masses.

As to the actual mass of the Universe at the present time, from the Lambda-CDM model, it is
Baryonic matter: 5%
Dark matter: 22%
Dark energy: 73%
Cosmic Microwave Background: 6*10^(-5)
Cosmic Neutrino Background: <~ 0.5%

Of the particles made massive by the Higgs particle, the up and down quarks contribute about 1% to the nucleons' masses, and nucleons have nearly all the mass of baryonic matter. Electrons contribute about 0.5% or less. Binding energies are a more difficult problem, though for the most part, those are insignificant.

Neutrinos' masses are an oddity, and the best explanation so far is the seesaw model. In it, right-handed neutrinos have "Majorana masses" of about 10^(12) GeV or thereabouts, a mass that makes them their own antiparticles. Flip its spin and it becomes its antiparticle. This mixes with the neutrinos' "Dirac masses", which connect the left-handed and right-handed parts. These are the sort of masses that the charged elementary fermions have, masses that the Higgs mechanism makes.

The origin of "dark matter" particles' masses continues to be mysterious, and the origin of the mass of "dark energy" is even more mysterious.

Last edited by lpetrich; 4th February 2013 at 12:15 PM.
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Old 4th February 2013, 12:51 PM   #845
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
I've had a lot of experience with Farsight's arguments.

Some of his arguments are a theologian's sorts of arguments, like treating Albert Einstein's work as sacred books that it would be wrong to depart from. Even though Einstein departed from Farsight's beliefs, like believing in a unified space-time and rejecting space-motion.
I'm the one who challenges theological-like woo by pointing to what Einstein/Maxwell/Minkowski etc said, and to the hard scientific evidence. Lpetrich rabbits on about the multiverse and similar speculative junk.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
One can easily extend Farsight's "demonstration" of the nonexistence of time to "demonstrate" the nonexistence of space.
No you can't. I say things like hold your hands up and you can see the gap, the space between them, but you can't see time flowing. And I don't claim that time does not exist, I say it exists like heat exists.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
One can also "demonstrate" that rainbows and clouds are solid objects with it, and also that gravity and electrostatic and magnetostatic fields do not exist.
No you can't. Drop a pencil. It falls down. Gravitational fields exist.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
As to Farsight's argument that the Higgs particle does not account for much of the Universe's mass, that's an irrelevant side issue.
It's not my argument. See A Zeptospace Odyssey by Gian Giudice. He's a CERN physicist. When he tells us that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter it's not irrelevant.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
It makes the rest masses of all the other massive Standard-Model particles. I add that qualification between the photon and gluon stay massless, the state of every Standard-Model particle but the Higgs particle before electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs mechanism.
Giudice also says the Higgs mechanism is the "toilet of the Standard model". Also see Particle headache: Why the Higgs could spell disaster where you can read this:

"It's a nice story, but one that some find a little contrived. "The minimal standard model Higgs is like a fairy tale," says Guido Altarelli of CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. "It is a toy model to make the theory match the data, a crutch to allow the standard model to walk a bit further until something better comes along."

These are CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the Higgs mechanism. And this is a skeptics forum. By the by, the Fermilab video Anders referred to above features Don Lincoln, and it is patronising schoolboy trash.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Hadrons are bound states, so their masses don't count as Standard-Model particle masses.
The electron is a bound state too. It's a body, Einstein referred to it as such when he said the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Nucleons get most of their masses from color confinement. Their quarks and gluons cannot get more than about 10^(-15) m from each other without those particles' interactions getting superstrong. This means that those particles' wavefunctions cannot extend over a greater size, and thus that their masses should be about a few hundred MeV. Thus, the nucleons' masses.
Whatever the mechanism of confinement, the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
As to the actual mass of the Universe at the present time, from the Lambda-CDM model, it is
Baryonic matter: 5%
Dark matter: 22%
Dark energy: 73%
Cosmic Microwave Background: 6*10^(-5)
Cosmic Neutrino Background: <~ 0.5%
...
See page 174 of Giudice's book, where he says this: "Although the nature of dark matter is still unknown, it is unlikely that its mass originates from the Higgs substance. In summary the Higgs mechanism accounts for about 1% of the mass of ordinary matter, and for only 0.2% of the mass of the universe. This is not nearly enough to justify the claim of explaining the origin of mass"

Last edited by Farsight; 4th February 2013 at 12:52 PM.
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Old 4th February 2013, 05:28 PM   #846
Reality Check
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm the one who challenges theological-like woo by pointing to what Einstein/Maxwell/Minkowski etc said, and to the hard scientific evidence.
That is wrong. You are the one who makes up theological-like woo by misinterpreting what Einstein/Maxwell/Minkowski etc said, and never citing the hard scientific evidence.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
When he tells us that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter it's not irrelevant.
The well known fact that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter is not irrelevant.

It is however an irrelevant side issue for this thread.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
These are CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the Higgs mechanism.
Particle headache: Why the Higgs could spell disaster
Wrong - that are no CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the Higgs mechanism in the article.
There CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the minimal standard model Higgs (the one that has probably been found).

And this is a skeptics forum. By the by, the Fermilab video Anders referred to above features Don Lincoln. It is a nice (if simplistic) description of the Higgs boson and does not claim to be anything else..
What is a Higgs Boson?
Quote:
Uploaded on Jul 7, 2011
Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln describes the nature of the Higgs boson. Several large experimental groups are hot on the trail of this elusive subatomic particle which is thought to explain the origins of particle mass

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
The electron is a bound state too.
That is nonsense. A free electron is not bound to anything. It is not in a bound state.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
See page 174 of Giudice's book, where he says this speculated that : "Although the nature of dark matter is still unknown, it is unlikely that its mass originates from the Higgs substance."
Fixed your statement .
I would speculate that Giudice is wrong. Dark matter is likely to be a new fundemental particle. Thus its mass will originate from the Higgs "substance". If it is a composite particle like a protpn or neutron then ist mass will originate from its fundemental particles (Higgs) and binding between them.

I do not know why Giudice is concerned about that 1% number.
A proton is made of 2 up quarks and a down quark (8 to 11 Mev) but has a mass of 938 Mev. Protons make up most of the mass of the universe.
Thus the Higgs mechanism providing ~1% of the mass is not surprising.
The reason is as lpetrich stated:
Quote:
So ~1%Originally Posted by lpetrich
Nucleons get most of their masses from color confinement. Their quarks and gluons cannot get more than about 10^(-15) m from each other without those particles' interactions getting superstrong. This means that those particles' wavefunctions cannot extend over a greater size, and thus that their masses should be about a few hundred MeV. Thus, the nucleons' masses.

Last edited by Reality Check; 4th February 2013 at 05:32 PM.
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Old 4th February 2013, 05:53 PM   #847
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm the one who challenges theological-like woo by pointing to what Einstein/Maxwell/Minkowski etc said,
You just proved his point, as you are wont to do, that you treat certain texts as holy. Anybody who is not a worshiper of those three people knows that they occasionally said things that were simply wrong. (Even Einstein admitted that some of what he wrote was wrong.) The way to avoid merely parroting a person is to engage in some understanding of what they wrote about. You refuse to do this, since you refuse to learn general relativity.
Quote:
and to the hard scientific evidence.
Again, since you admit that you cannot do GR, you cannot know GR. So you cannot understand the hard scientific evidence.
Quote:
Lpetrich rabbits on about the multiverse and similar speculative junk.
Whether or not he does it is irrelevant to your failings. It is good to see that you like to engage in attacks on others without foundation while you run to moderators to protect you from attacks that have foundation.
Quote:
No you can't. I say things like hold your hands up and you can see the gap, the space between them, but you can't see time flowing. And I don't claim that time does not exist, I say it exists like heat exists.
You refuse to ever defend this argument, you simply repeat it again and again and again. You have never said how you can see space. You have never said how we can see motion in a clock. If you cannot answer questions about this, then you have nothing.
Quote:
No you can't. Drop a pencil. It falls down. Gravitational fields exist.
This motion has essentially nothing to do with gravitational fields. It is entirely consistent with Aristotelean gravity. Again you demonstrate that you know nothing about "hard science".
Quote:
It's not my argument.
This seems to merely be a deceitful claim.
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Old 4th February 2013, 10:17 PM   #848
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I say things like hold your hands up and you can see the gap, the space between them, but you can't see time flowing. And I don't claim that time does not exist, I say it exists like heat exists.
I can't see space either. Just a lot of perceptions that I unconsciously interpret as an angular distance, and from there, a linear distance. Time is no different.
Quote:
Drop a pencil. It falls down. Gravitational fields exist.
That's not the same as seeing a gravitational field itself. I don't see how time is a worse inference than gravity.

Quote:
These are CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the Higgs mechanism. ...
That's because the Standard-Model Higgs particle has certain theoretical problems, though these can be corrected with additional particles, like supersymmetry partners.

Interestingly, the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model requires not the SM's single Higgs doublet but two Higgs doublets before electroweak symmetry breaking. In the SUSY version as in the ordinary version, some of the modes get "eaten" by the W and the Z, but not surprisingly, there are more survivors. Unlike the single neutral Higgs of the SM, the MSSM has 3 neutral Higgses and 1 charged Higgs. However, the MSSM's extra particles can have masses much greater than the observed Higgs particle's mass.

Quote:
The electron is a bound state too.
It is NOT. The electron satisfies the Dirac equation, just like the photon satisfying Maxwell's equations. Both equations are quantized, of course.

In fact, the Dirac hypothesis has been tested in elementary-particle experiments, like at the LHC's predecessor in its tunnels, the LEP. That accelerator smashed electrons and positrons into each other with energies of more than 100 GeV, and the electron still had Dirac structure.

Quote:
Whatever the mechanism of confinement, the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.
I fail to see the relevance of that issue.
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Old 6th February 2013, 10:55 AM   #849
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
That's because the Standard-Model Higgs particle has certain theoretical problems, though these can be corrected with additional particles, like supersymmetry partners.
Indeed. I addressed some of the issues with the Standard Model several months ago in this very thread. In fact, the article Farsight linked to uses almost the same words:
Quote:
the standard model is manifestly incomplete. It predicts the outcome of experiments involving normal particles to accuracies of several decimal places, but is frustratingly mute on gravity, dark matter and other components of the cosmos we know or suspect to exist.
Quote:
the standard model is known to be seriously flawed. The standard model doesn't even attempt to cover gravity, it can't explain dark matter, it fails badly at explaining dark energy, it fails at explaining the matter/antimatter imbalance, and so on.
Interesting that he links to that to try to support his claims that everyone is wrong, yet completely ignored it when previously posted in the same thread.

It also seems a little odd that Farsight keeps bringing up people having concerns about the standard model as if it's some kind of important dissent that no-one's aware of. Yes, there are lots of things in physics we don't currently understand. Trying to get a better understanding is the entire reason we built the LHC in the first place. The fact that the particle we've found appears so far to be exactly what we weren't expecting - a Higgs boson consistent with the existing standard model - simply means that things are likely to get even more interesting since none of the explanations we've come up with so far are likely to be correct. Finding out new things isn't a problem, it's the whole point of doing science.
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Old 6th February 2013, 11:26 AM   #850
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More on the Higgs particle in general.

The Standard Model has a rather baroque structure, and I don't know if any of you people might want to see any of the details.

Before electroweak symmetry breaking the SM Higgs particle is a multiplet with two neutral particles and one charged particle with charges +- 1 * elementary charge.

In electroweak symmetry breaking, the W and the Z become massive, and they "eat" some of the Higgs particles, turning them into additional polarization modes. The W's consume the charged Higgses and the Z one of the neutral ones, leaving only one neutral one.

That's the Higgs particle that's likely being observed.


This particle is rather badly behave theoretically when one tries to extrapolate its behavior up to Grand Unified Theory energies. But if it has a close relative with spin 1/2, it can be tamed. There is a theory that specifies such particles: supersymmetry. It relates particles with different spins, and supersymmetry partners must share masses and their other quantum numbers. But is supersymmetry is broken, then we can account for the lack of observations of known particles' superpartners: those superpartners are too massive to observe.

The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, as it's called, features not one but two Higgs multiplets before electroweak symmetry breaking. After it, one charged and one neutral Higgs particle disappear into the W and Z, as with the plain SM, but that leaves three neutral Higgses and one charged Higgs.

One of the neutral Higgses is much like the SM Higgs, and the others can be much more massive. In fact, if they are, then the light Higgs is very close to the SM Higgs in its behavior.
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Old 6th February 2013, 11:45 AM   #851
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I once wrote in more detail about Standard-Model problems, noting a blog entry by Lubos Motl on that subject. The problems can be divided into two types: empirical and theoretical.

Empirical: observed effects that do not fit the Standard Model
  • Gravity
  • Neutrino oscillations
  • Baryon asymmetry
  • Dark matter
  • Dark energy
  • Inflation

Theoretical: self-consistency problems, complexities, features that suggest underlying theories
  • Number of free parameters
  • Strong CP problem and axions
  • Hierarchy problem
  • Higgs instability - what one gets as one goes to GUT energies
  • Gauge-coupling unification in Grand Unified Theories (GUT's)
  • Patterns in the elementary-fermion multiplets

Proton decay fits neither, it must be said, but if it's ever observed, it will become an empirical problem for the Standard Model.

I once identified a cycle of discovery in the fundamental constituents of the Universe:
  1. A few category members discovered, with the category going unrecognized.
  2. More members discovered, and the category becomes recognized.
  3. Patterns discovered in the category.
  4. These patterns showed to be the result of some underlying mechanisms.
Here's what has fit it so far:
  1. Chemical elements
  2. Atomic nuclei
  3. Hadrons
  4. The Standard Model, except for the last stage
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Old 7th February 2013, 01:34 AM   #852
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Welcome, lpetrich, and thanks for the very informative posts.
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Old 7th February 2013, 05:42 AM   #853
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Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
...It also seems a little odd that Farsight keeps bringing up people having concerns about the standard model as if it's some kind of important dissent that no-one's aware of.
It isn't dissent, it's physicists telling it how it is. The issue is the Higgs sector of the standard model, not the standard model itself.

Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
Yes, there are lots of things in physics we don't currently understand. Trying to get a better understanding is the entire reason we built the LHC in the first place.
And it's important to understand that the Higgs mechanism is the weakest link of the standard model, that it's thought to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter whilst the rest is down to E=mc², and like Susskind said, is absolutely nothing to do with "cosmic treacle". Dismissing things like this because they're at odds with CERN publicity material for gullible saps does not advance understanding, it clouds it.

Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
The fact that the particle we've found appears so far to be exactly what we weren't expecting - a Higgs boson consistent with the existing standard model - simply means that things are likely to get even more interesting since none of the explanations we've come up with so far are likely to be correct. Finding out new things isn't a problem, it's the whole point of doing science.
Is this a skeptics forum or what? What's been found is a statistical bump on a graph, a "resonance" that lasts no time flat. It could be anything.
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Old 7th February 2013, 06:34 AM   #854
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Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
That is wrong. You are the one who makes up theological-like woo by misinterpreting what Einstein/Maxwell/Minkowski etc said, and never citing the hard scientific evidence.
I point to what they said and I'm forever referring to hard scientific evidence, you dismiss it because you believe in nonsense. Have a read of mass-energy equivalence on wikipedia. It isn't theological-like woo:

"In physics, in particular special and general relativity, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy; energy is a property of all mass; and the two properties are connected by a constant."

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
The well known fact that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter is not irrelevant.
It is however an irrelevant side issue for this thread.
No it isn't, it's of crucial importance. As is the issue of how the Higgs boson gets its mass. See above - it's from the kinetic energy supplied to the protons.

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
Wrong - that are no CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the Higgs mechanism in the article.
There CERN professionals expressing their disatisfaction with the minimal standard model Higgs (the one that has probably been found).
You're clutching at straws and engaging in wishful thinking.

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
And this is a skeptics forum. By the by, the Fermilab video Anders referred to above features Don Lincoln. It is a nice (if simplistic) description of the Higgs boson and does not claim to be anything else. What is a Higgs Boson?
It's pathetic junk that explains nothing at all. The Barracuda v Eddie-no-stranger-to-donuts is risible garbage.

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
Fixed your statement .
I would speculate that Giudice is wrong. Dark matter is likely to be a new fundamental particle. Thus its mass will originate from the Higgs "substance". If it is a composite particle like a protpn or neutron then ist mass will originate from its fundemental particles (Higgs) and binding between them.
People have speculated along these lines for decades, but no actual evidence for a new fundamental particle has shown up. Like me Giudice likes relativity. I imagine that he knows that the energy of a gravitational field, which acts gravitatively like any other form of energy, has a mass equivalence.

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
I do not know why Giudice is concerned about that 1% number.
He's just being honest. What's noticeable is that it doesn't feature in the CERN publicity material. I imagine there's some tensions between the physicists and the management.

Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
A proton is made of 2 up quarks and a down quark (8 to 11 Mev) but has a mass of 938 Mev. Protons make up most of the mass of the universe. Thus the Higgs mechanism providing ~1% of the mass is not surprising. The reason is as lpetrich stated:

Nucleons get most of their masses from color confinement. Their quarks and gluons cannot get more than about 10^(-15) m from each other without those particles' interactions getting superstrong. This means that those particles' wavefunctions cannot extend over a greater size, and thus that their masses should be about a few hundred MeV. Thus, the nucleons' masses.
You don't understand what lpetrich said, you just latch onto it because of wishful thinking. Gluons are virtual particles, we've never seen a free quark, and like Einstein said, mass is a measure of energy content. Given that some amount of energy is confined by some mechanism, the mass of the resultant system is a measure of how much energy is confined. This applies globally, even when the resultant system is a particle.

Last edited by Farsight; 7th February 2013 at 06:35 AM.
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Old 7th February 2013, 07:17 AM   #855
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And it's important to understand that the Higgs mechanism is the weakest link of the standard model, that it's thought to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter whilst the rest is down to E=mc², ...
Again, that completely irrelevant issue.

Quote:
Is this a skeptics forum or what? What's been found is a statistical bump on a graph, a "resonance" that lasts no time flat. It could be anything.
However, its decays gives us clues about its nature, and so far, it closely resembles the Standard-Model Higgs particle.
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Old 7th February 2013, 07:20 AM   #856
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And it's important to understand that the Higgs mechanism is the weakest link of the standard model, that it's thought to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter whilst the rest is down to E=mc²,
It certainly isn't the first time, and I doubt this will be the last time this is said, but it isn't either-or there.
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Old 7th February 2013, 07:28 AM   #857
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
I can't see space either. Just a lot of perceptions that I unconsciously interpret as an angular distance, and from there, a linear distance. Time is no different.
You can literally see the gap between your hands. You know they're not together. And you can waggle those hands and see them move. So space and motion have an empirical foundation which "the flow of time" does not. Plus you cannot move through time like you can move through space, so time is patently different.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
That's not the same as seeing a gravitational field itself. I don't see how time is a worse inference than gravity.
Time isn't, the worse inference is the flow of time and moving through time.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
That's because the Standard-Model Higgs particle has certain theoretical problems, though these can be corrected with additional particles, like supersymmetry partners.

Interestingly, the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model requires not the SM's single Higgs doublet but two Higgs doublets before electroweak symmetry breaking. In the SUSY version as in the ordinary version, some of the modes get "eaten" by the W and the Z, but not surprisingly, there are more survivors. Unlike the single neutral Higgs of the SM, the MSSM has 3 neutral Higgses and 1 charged Higgs. However, the MSSM's extra particles can have masses much greater than the observed Higgs particle's mass.
See this and other reports describing how the LHC results are "not consistent with many of the most likely models of Susy". Aslo see what Woit has to say. In short, SUSY is a busted flush.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
It is NOT. The electron satisfies the Dirac equation, just like the photon satisfying Maxwell's equations. Both equations are quantized, of course. In fact, the Dirac hypothesis has been tested in elementary-particle experiments, like at the LHC's predecessor in its tunnels, the LEP. That accelerator smashed electrons and positrons into each other with energies of more than 100 GeV, and the electron still had Dirac structure.
Note the word "structure", and that in pair production we can construct electrons and positrons from gamma photons. Also note that low-energy annihilation typically results in gamma photons. And see LEP on wiki. With sufficient energy you can create other structures. Google it. Some of those structures are definitely bound. And see atomic orbital and note this: The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves. Electrons exist as standing waves full stop, we can diffract them. They're self-bound structures.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
I fail to see the relevance of that issue.
It's what Einstein said in his E=mc² paper. The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. And he referred to the electron as a body. The Higgs mechanism contradicts this, and asserts that the mass of a body is a measure of its interaction with the Higgs field. I know that you and others seek to support the standard model, but by backing the Higgs mechanism whilst playing dumb about E=mc² you’re threatening the standard model. Remember what Giudice said: it’s the toilet of the standard model. It needs to be replaced, lpetrich. By a symmetry.
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Old 7th February 2013, 07:46 AM   #858
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Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
...It also seems a little odd that Farsight keeps bringing up people having concerns about the standard model as if it's some kind of important dissent that no-one's aware of...
I bring up physicists having concerns about the Higgs sector of the standard model. People are generally not aware that it's the cuckoo in the nest.

Originally Posted by edd
It certainly isn't the first time, and I doubt this will be the last time this is said, but it isn't either-or there.
Edd, it's very simple. Either Einstein and E=mc² is right and the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, or the mass of some bodies is a measure of something else. You can't have it both ways.
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Old 7th February 2013, 07:56 AM   #859
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Have a read of mass-energy equivalence on wikipedia. It isn't theological-like woo:

"In physics, in particular special and general relativity, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy; energy is a property of all mass; and the two properties are connected by a constant."
LOL at this Wikipedia-thumping.
Quote:
No it isn't, it's of crucial importance. As is the issue of how the Higgs boson gets its mass. See above - it's from the kinetic energy supplied to the protons.
That's how the particle is created in the LHC, and it has nothing to do with their nature. It does NOT explain why this particle has a mass of about 125 GeV.

Quote:
You don't understand what lpetrich said, you just latch onto it because of wishful thinking. Gluons are virtual particles, we've never seen a free quark, and like Einstein said, mass is a measure of energy content. Given that some amount of energy is confined by some mechanism, the mass of the resultant system is a measure of how much energy is confined. This applies globally, even when the resultant system is a particle.
Energy as some sort of stuff -- that's so typical of pseudoscientific woo-woo. No amount of Einstein-thumping about how E = mc2 can change that.

It's not the "energy" that's confined, it's the quark and gluon fields.
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Old 7th February 2013, 08:27 AM   #860
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I point to what they said and I'm forever referring to hard scientific evidence, you dismiss it because you believe in nonsense. Have a read of mass-energy equivalence on wikipedia.
But you haven't read about it in a physics textbook and you have never done any problems, done any experiments, or developed any applications that use the actual science of this equivalence. Yet you claim, on the basis of your wikipedia knowledge, to criticize almost every scientist working in the field on their knowledge of physics.
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
You can literally see the gap between your hands. You know they're not together. And you can waggle those hands and see them move. So space and motion have an empirical foundation which "the flow of time" does not. Plus you cannot move through time like you can move through space, so time is patently different.
Please explain how waggling your hands is evidence of motion. Your reasoning on this point is not clear. Your earlier responses to requests for clarification on this issue were insults and refusals.
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Old 7th February 2013, 08:30 AM   #861
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
It certainly isn't the first time, and I doubt this will be the last time this is said, but it isn't either-or there.
Right.

The Higgs boson is (probably) responsible for 1% of the mass of matter in the universe.

The mass of any kind of matter, whether or not it is explained by the Higgs boson, can be expressed as m in E=mc².

My car gets 22 miles per gallon of fuel.

5% of the fuel in my car is ethanol.

Do those two statements contradict each other?
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Old 7th February 2013, 09:01 AM   #862
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
It's what Einstein said in his E=mc² paper. The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. And he referred to the electron as a body. The Higgs mechanism contradicts this, and asserts that the mass of a body is a measure of its interaction with the Higgs field.
We've been through this a dozen times, but I have to say it again I suppose.

The electron has a rest mass m = 511 keV. It has this mass, rather than zero mass, because of the Higgs mechanism.

The electron's rest energy is E = mc^2, and which figures into all electron conservation-of-energy issues. Just like Einstein said.

You are making up a conflict between these two statements. You're pulling it out of thin air and out of your own misunderstanding. Please stop.
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Old 7th February 2013, 09:06 AM   #863
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
LOL at this Wikipedia-thumping.
You dismiss Einstein, and you dismiss factually correct articles. Is there anything you won't dismiss?

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
That's how the particle is created in the LHC, and it has nothing to do with their nature. It does NOT explain why this particle has a mass of about 125 GeV.
What does? It's not as if Higgs or anybody else predicted a boson with a mass of 125GeV years ago. There's been postdiction on that, but not prediction.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Energy as some sort of stuff -- that's so typical of pseudoscientific woo-woo. No amount of Einstein-thumping about how E = mc2 can change that.
It isn't woo. In the LHC, protons are accelerated, and are given kinetic energy. The so-called Higgs boson is quite literally made using this energy.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
It's not the "energy" that's confined, it's the quark and gluon fields.
No, it's energy. Look to low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation. The result is usually pions, which are transient, which decay to transient muons along with neutrinos and electrons. But there's a cross-section of about 1% direct to gamma photons. Where's the quark/gluon fields then? Here, look it up on wikipedia:

"In general, a proton encountering an antiproton will turn into a number of mesons, mostly pions and kaons, which will fly away from the annihilation point. The newly created mesons are unstable, and will decay in a series of reactions that ultimately produce nothing but gamma rays, electrons, positrons, and neutrinos."

Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid View Post
But you haven't read about it in a physics textbook and you have never done any problems, done any experiments, or developed any applications that use the actual science of this equivalence. Yet you claim, on the basis of your wikipedia knowledge, to criticize almost every scientist working in the field on their knowledge of physics.
I'm not criticizing almost every scientist. I told you what CERN physicists think about this. Their views are at odds with the publicity pap that you lap up.

Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid View Post
Please explain how waggling your hands is evidence of motion. Your reasoning on this point is not clear. Your earlier responses to requests for clarification on this issue were insults and refusals.
I haven't responded with insults and refusals. You simply waggle your hands and you see that they don't stay in the same place. When that happens, we call it motion. It's that simple.

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Old 7th February 2013, 09:53 AM   #864
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
You dismiss Einstein, and you dismiss factually correct articles. Is there anything you won't dismiss?
Arguing like a theologian again, Farsight, with your implication that I'm somehow denying some great prophet.

And what justifies adding Wikipedia to the Canon of Sacred Books of Science?

Quote:
It's not as if Higgs or anybody else predicted a boson with a mass of 125GeV years ago. There's been postdiction on that, but not prediction.
Farsight, you need to read the literature on the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. The recently-discovered Higgs particle is in the mass range expected from the MSSM.
Quote:
In the LHC, protons are accelerated, and are given kinetic energy. The so-called Higgs boson is quite literally made using this energy.
That's the woo -- talking about energy as if it's some sort of stuff.
Quote:
Look to low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation. The result is usually pions, which are transient, which decay to transient muons along with neutrinos and electrons. But there's a cross-section of about 1% direct to gamma photons. Where's the quark/gluon fields then?
The ordinary quarks and antiquarks annihilate, and the gluons disappear with them.

The transience of pions and muons is totally irrelevant.

Strictly speaking, what we observe as elementary particles are field excitations, just as light and other electromagnetic waves are electromagnetic-field excitations. There's no "energy stuff" anywhere. I'm trying to describe a basic feature of quantum field theory in nonmathematical language. I remember a physics professor who described photons as "blobs of light". That seems reasonably close to what QFT says a photon is.

Quote:
You simply waggle your hands and you see that they don't stay in the same place. When that happens, we call it motion. It's that simple.
Seems like a reversion to the methods of Aristotelian physics.

We have an internal time sense, and we use that and our memories to deduce motion: change between one time and another.
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Old 7th February 2013, 09:56 AM   #865
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
We've been through this a dozen times, but I have to say it again I suppose.
And you've said nothing a dozen times, apart from repeat a mantra because you still don't understand E=mc².

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
The electron has a rest mass m = 511 keV. It has this mass, rather than zero mass, because of the Higgs mechanism.
No it doesn't. It has this mass because that's how much energy is present in the system or structure that we call an electron. And as for what's interacting with what to create this structure, see two-photon physics and note this:

"From quantum electrodynamics it can be found that photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but they can interact through higher-order processes. A photon can, within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, fluctuate into a charged fermion-antifermion pair, to either of which the other photon can couple".

That's saying pair production occurs because pair production occurs. It's wrong. We do not see photons spontaneously fluctuating into electrons and positrons which then magically transform back into a single photon, which all the while has been propagating at c. It has to be wrong because electrons and positrons do not propagate at c, any fluctuating photon must be travelling at less than c. So it's a photon-photon interaction that created our electron, and you don't have to be the brain of Britain to work out that a photon-photon interaction, or an electromagnetic self-interaction if you prefer, sustains the existence of that electron.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
The electron's rest energy is E = mc^2, and which figures into all electron conservation-of-energy issues. Just like Einstein said.
And just like Einstein said, the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. And from that you know that if you trapped a 511keV photon as a standing wave in a box, you will add mass m = 511keV to that system. You know that the Higgs mechanism has absolutely nothing to do with this. Now go and look at atomic orbitals and pay attention: The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves. So a standing wave inside a box adds mass to that system by virtue of E=mc², but a standing wave that isn't inside a box doesn't? Come on ben, think.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
You are making up a conflict between these two statements. You're pulling it out of thin air and out of your own misunderstanding. Please stop.
I'm not making it up a conflict. Einstein also said If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c². Now go and look at electron-positron annihilation. You've got two radiating bodies whose mass diminishes to zero, and then they're not there any more. Not some fabulous Higgs mechanism that magically switches off because fat Eddie turned into a barracuda.

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Old 7th February 2013, 10:00 AM   #866
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And you've said nothing a dozen times, apart from repeat a mantra because you still don't understand E=mc².

No it doesn't. It has this mass because that's how much energy is present in the system or structure that we call an electron.
And why is there that much energy present?
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:12 AM   #867
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No, it's energy. Look to low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation. The result is usually pions, which are transient, which decay to transient muons along with neutrinos and electrons. But there's a cross-section of about 1% direct to gamma photons. Where's the quark/gluon fields then? Here, look it up on wikipedia:
Such a strange way of arguing.

a) Contradict a bunch of physicists.
b) Say, "No, my view is obvious"
c) Post an unrelated (but true in context) snippet from a popular or secondary source
d) Say, "See?! See?!" as though your bizarre reading-between-the-lines process results in a truth so obvious you don't have to explain it.

Above: your own words are muddled contrarian gibberish. You leap from one phase suggesting QCD is wrong, to a random quote of experimental facts perfectly consistent with QCD (p pbar -> mesons), a false (or very poorly phrased) non-fact (p pbar -> pure direct photons? Never.), and generic muddleheaded contrarianism ("where are the quark and gluon fields?").

The text you quote from Wikipedia is correct, and indeed this sort of thing is a prediction of the quark/gluon theory of hadrons and more generally of the Standard Model, and it disagrees with you.
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:21 AM   #868
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Such a strange way of arguing.

a) Contradict a bunch of physicists.
b) Say, "No, my view is obvious"
c) Post an unrelated (but true in context) snippet from a popular or secondary source
d) Say, "See?! See?!" as though your bizarre reading-between-the-lines process results in a truth so obvious you don't have to explain it.
Indeed! Ad nauseum.
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:24 AM   #869
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Argument by Pinball.

If you can bounce from side to side often enough, eventually you'll confuse your opponent and can slip between his arguments into the rabbit hole
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:32 AM   #870
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Originally Posted by Hellbound View Post
Argument by Pinball.

If you can bounce from side to side often enough, eventually you'll confuse your opponent and can slip between his arguments into the rabbit hole
If there's a rabbit in your pinball machine, something has gone very wrong.

Although I actually quite like that as a metaphor. What turns up where completely unwanted, constantly gets in the way, and just plain doesn't make any sense? Farsight's claims - the rabbit in the pinball machine.
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:42 AM   #871
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Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
If there's a rabbit in your pinball machine, something has gone very wrong.

Although I actually quite like that as a metaphor. What turns up where completely unwanted, constantly gets in the way, and just plain doesn't make any sense? Farsight's claims - the rabbit in the pinball machine.
Yes, I intentionally mixed metaphors to "sweeten" the analogy...although I was thinking more about the entrance to Wonderland...
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Old 7th February 2013, 10:44 AM   #872
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Arguing like a theologian again, Farsight, with your implication that I'm somehow denying some great prophet. And what justifies adding Wikipedia to the Canon of Sacred Books of Science?
Geddoutofit lpetrich. I give references to back up my case, you're attempting to dismiss them, and everybody can see it. You'd be better off giving your own references to counter mine.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Farsight, you need to read the literature on the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. The recently-discovered Higgs particle is in the mass range expected from the MSSM.
No I don't. We've got enough plain-vanilla physics issues with the Higgs boson without wandering off into the decades-old lah-lah land of gluinos and squarks and Higgsinos. But here's a little literature, on wikipedia:

...This lower limit is significantly above where the MSSM would typically predict it to be, and while it does not rule out the MSSM, the discovery of the Higgs with a mass of 125 GeV makes proponents of the MSSM nervous.

...As the Higgs was found at around 125 GeV (along with no other superparticles) at the LHC, this strongly hints at new dynamics beyond the MSSM such as the 'Next to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model' (NMSSM).


Quick lpetrich, shift them goalposts!

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
That's the woo -- talking about energy as if it's some sort of stuff.
Get used to it. When Einstein said energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another, he wasn't kidding.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
The ordinary quarks and antiquarks annihilate, and the gluons disappear with them.
But the energy doesn't disappear. So think again about it's not the "energy" that's confined, it's the quark and gluon fields. Oh, and do note that gluons are virtual particles. They were never really there anyway. Not as little bullet-things rattling back and forth between the quarks. It's the same for virtual photons. Magnets don't shine, and hydrogen atoms don't twinkle.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Strictly speaking, what we observe as elementary particles are field excitations, just as light and other electromagnetic waves are electromagnetic-field excitations. There's no "energy stuff" anywhere.
You referred to quark and gluon fields, if we say these are quark/gluon field excitations and then note that these are annihilated to electromagnetic field excitations, then note that energy is conserved along with what Einstein said (see above), and then look up Higgs substance, it's crystal clear that you're talking out of your hat. And that you don't know that this "Higgs substance" would pan out a whole lot better if it were responsible for photon energy-momentum as well as electron mass. Because that then introduces the symmetry between momentum and inertia: a wave in space resists your efforts to change its state of motion whether it's moving on an open path or a closed path.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
I'm trying to describe a basic feature of quantum field theory in nonmathematical language. I remember a physics professor who described photons as "blobs of light". That seems reasonably close to what QFT says a photon is.
I beg to differ. I think a better description would involve a lattice distortion, this lattice being merely a visual aid.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Seems like a reversion to the methods of Aristotelian physics.
No it doesn't, it's empirical.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
We have an internal time sense, and we use that and our memories to deduce motion: change between one time and another.
No, we don't deduce motion We see things, and we see them moving and/or changing. We don't see time. And we don't see time flowing, or anything moving through time either.
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:01 AM   #873
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Originally Posted by godless dave View Post
And why is there that much energy present?
I'd say it's because of action h in E=hf which is common to all photons, which is in turn related to the properties of space. Have a read of The role of the potentials in electromagnetism by Percy Hammond and see the bit near the end: "We conclude that the field describes the curvature that characterizes the electromagnetic interaction." A photon is essentially a singleton electromagnetic wave which is a spatial curvature propagating at c. All electromagnetic waves share the same action, which has the dimensionality of momentum x distance and is intimately related to angular momentum. Only one wavelength and therefore energy is the right energy to match h and convert a gamma photon moving at c into the standing-wave structure called an electron.
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:07 AM   #874
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Only one wavelength and therefore energy is the right energy to match h and convert a gamma photon moving at c into the standing-wave structure called an electron.
And why that wavelength?
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:09 AM   #875
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And you've said nothing a dozen times, apart from repeat a mantra because you still don't understand E=mc².
Yes I do, and I can derive that formula. Can you?

Quote:
It has this mass because that's how much energy is present in the system or structure that we call an electron. And as for what's interacting with what to create this structure, see two-photon physics and note this:

"From quantum electrodynamics it can be found that photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but they can interact through higher-order processes. A photon can, within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, fluctuate into a charged fermion-antifermion pair, to either of which the other photon can couple".
Electrons as self-interacting photons. Yawn. This indirect photon-photon interaction is teeny teeny teeny tiny.

Electrons have spin 1/2, and there is no way to get one from an integer-spin field. Rotate a system with spin j by 360 degrees. Its wavefunction will get a sign of (-1)2j relative to its original. Photons get +1, electrons get -1, and never the twain shall meet. One likewise can't get Fermi-Dirac statistics from a system that follows Bose-Einstein statistics. Like what happens to a combined wavefunction upon interchange:
BE: X(2,1) = + X(1,2)
FD: X(2,1) = - X(1,2)

Quote:
We do not see photons spontaneously fluctuating into electrons and positrons which then magically transform back into a single photon, which all the while has been propagating at c. It has to be wrong because electrons and positrons do not propagate at c, any fluctuating photon must be travelling at less than c.
That's projecting classical-limit intuitions onto quantum-mechanical effects, and that's not the first time that mistake was made.
Quote:
And just like Einstein said, the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. And from that you know that if you trapped a 511keV photon as a standing wave in a box, you will add mass m = 511keV to that system.
True but totally irrelevant. Why that mass and not some other? The Higgs hypothesis explains it as some value of the electron-Higgs coupling constant. The trapped-photon hypothesis does not have anything comparable to fix a value.
Quote:
You know that the Higgs mechanism has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Because the trapped-photon hypothesis is just plain wrong. Electrons follow the Dirac equation up to collision energies of at least 100 GeV, as determined by the LHC's predecessor, LEP.

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Old 7th February 2013, 11:23 AM   #876
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Geddoutofit lpetrich. I give references to back up my case, you're attempting to dismiss them, and everybody can see it. You'd be better off giving your own references to counter mine.
Like some theologian quoting some sacred books?

(Wikipedia-thumping snipped)

The Wikipedia article on "MSSM Higgs Mass" has a note on it stating "This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)".

So please explain to us once again, Farsight, why Wikipedia deserves the status of a sacred book.

Quote:
Oh, and do note that gluons are virtual particles. They were never really there anyway. Not as little bullet-things rattling back and forth between the quarks. It's the same for virtual photons. Magnets don't shine, and hydrogen atoms don't twinkle.
More classical-limit absurdity.
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:23 AM   #877
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Originally Posted by Pixel42 View Post
Welcome, lpetrich, and thanks for the very informative posts.
Agreed hear hear!
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:25 AM   #878
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Originally Posted by godless dave View Post
And why is there that much energy present?
I'd say it's because of action h in E=hf which is common to all photons, which is in turn related to the properties of space. Have a read of The role of the potentials in electromagnetism by Percy Hammond and see the bit near the end: "We conclude that the field describes the curvature that characterizes the electromagnetic interaction." A photon is essentially a singleton electromagnetic wave which is a spatial curvature propagating at c. All electromagnetic waves share the same action, which has the dimensionality of momentum x distance and is intimately related to angular momentum. Only one wavelength and therefore energy is the right energy to match h and convert a gamma photon moving at c into the standing-wave structure called an electron.
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Old 7th February 2013, 11:26 AM   #879
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Geddoutofit lpetrich. I give references to back up my case, you're attempting to dismiss them, and everybody can see it. You'd be better off giving your own references to counter mine.
You cut out bits of text, wrap them in quote tags, and refer to them.

That does not mean that they back up your case.

You're so wrong, even Abraham Lincoln knew you were wrong:

Quote:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper.
Your understanding of Special Relativity is shallow; your understanding of the Higgs is pure guesswork; and your understanding of quantum mechanics is zero. Read what Wolfgang Pauli said:

Quote:
The carriers of an electrical charge are negative electrons and positive protons. In addition, positive electrons (positrons), negative antiprotons, and other particles (mesons and hyperons) of both positive and negative charge can be artificially produced by suitable processes.
And so on. </sarcasm>
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Old 7th February 2013, 12:15 PM   #880
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Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Like some theologian quoting some sacred books?
Change the record lpetrich. I'm the one quoting bona-fide references here. You're the one behaving like a theologian dismissing the science I'm referring to.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
So please explain to us once again, Farsight, why Wikipedia deserves the status of a sacred book.
It doesn't. It merely gives a fairly accurate description of current physics knowledge whilst demonstrates that I'm not just making this stuff up.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
More classical-limit absurdity
What's absurd is the notion that gluons are real particles. They aren't. They're virtual particles. They aren't real particles prior to proton-antiproton annihilation, and they aren't real particles thereafter when we've rendered the proton and the antiproton down to gamma photons. We do not see gluons spilling out of proton-antiproton annihilation.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Electrons as self-interacting photons. Yawn. This indirect photon-photon interaction is teeny teeny teeny tiny.
But this interaction is sufficient to create and electron-positron pair out of photons. Surely even you can see the tautology that suggests photons are converted into electrons and positrons because they spontaneously convert into electrons and positrons. Like worms from mud.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Electrons have spin 1/2, and there is no way to get one from an integer-spin field.
Not that old canard. Pair production happens. You get an electron and a positron from your integer-spin field.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Rotate a system with spin j by 360 degrees. Its wavefunction will get a sign of (-1)2j relative to its original. Photons get +1, electrons get -1, and never the twain shall meet. One likewise can't get Fermi-Dirac statistics from a system that follows Bose-Einstein statistics. Like what happens to a combined wavefunction upon interchange:
BE: X(2,1) = + X(1,2)
FD: X(2,1) = - X(1,2)
Nobody is impressed by that. because verybody knows you rotate an a spin ½ electron by 720 degrees, like you rotate a moebius strip. Ditto for the positron. And when you annihilate them with one another, you get two photons. Then the twain do meet. Just as they met in pair production.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
That's projecting classical-limit intuitions onto quantum-mechanical effects, and that's not the first time that mistake was made.
No it isn't, and it's no mistake. If a photon really fluttered back and forth into an electron-positron pair which cannot travel at c, that photon can't be travelling at c either. And to hoist you by your own petard, you cannot convert an electron and a positron into one photon, now can you? How you think you can get away with vague assertions about "classical-limit intuitions" beats me. And everybody else no doubt.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
True but totally irrelevant. Why that mass and not some other? The Higgs hypothesis explains it as some value of the electron-Higgs coupling constant. The trapped-photon hypothesis does not have anything comparable to fix a value.
It will. See what I said to Godless Dave. And note that spherical harmonics are used for atomic orbitals, where the electron exists as a standing wave. And that we can diffract an electron. Because it exists as a standing wave even when it isn't in an atomic orbital. Which rather suggests that harmonics also play a role.

Originally Posted by lpetrich
Because the trapped-photon hypothesis is just plain wrong. Electrons follow the Dirac equation up to collision energies of at least 100 GeV, as determined by the LHC's predecessor, LEP.
How plain wrong can it be when you can create an electron and a positron from a photon-photon interaction, and annihilate an electron and a positron to get photons? And in between, the electron is something you can diffract. And is a spinor. A thing with spin angular momentum wherein the Einstein-de Haas effect demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics. Sorry lpetrich, your "plain wrong" just won't do. And nor will the electron is a fundamental particle. Like you said about the LEP in post #848: That accelerator smashed electrons and positrons into each other with energies of more than 100 GeV, and the electron still had Dirac structure. It has structure. Like a moebius strip. Hence the spin ½. And the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation which includes c and ħ. So that electron isn't some point-particle, now is it?
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