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Why does the Higgs boson like Mexican hats? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, I've got a thought experiment for you.
0:12
Speaker 1: I have experimental thoughts. H Well, what if physicists discovered
0:17
Speaker 1: something totally new? All right, sounds good and it turns
0:21
Speaker 1: out to have been under our noses the whole time.
0:25
Speaker 1: Is it like a new booger particle? It's something that
0:29
Speaker 1: changed everything we thought we knew about the universe into
0:34
Speaker 1: a fundamental booger? Where is it more like a summer
0:37
Speaker 1: blockbuster type of movie discovery? But then we named it
0:42
Speaker 1: after a hat? I don't know if I could see
0:45
Speaker 1: that movie. Maybe depends on the kind of hat or
0:48
Speaker 1: the kind of booger. Hi, I'm more handmate cartoonists and
1:05
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:08
Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at u C Irvine, And
1:11
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly unsure about how to pronounce the word booger.
1:15
Speaker 1: But you know how to pick up though, right, no comment.
1:20
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering what they're made out of if they're
1:22
Speaker 1: made out of fundamental little boogerons, that's right, Yeah, boogers
1:25
Speaker 1: are are just matter, so therefore they're made out of
1:27
Speaker 1: the same things we were made out of. We are
1:29
Speaker 1: all made out of star boogers, or it would be
1:31
Speaker 1: weird if they were made out of something else, because
1:33
Speaker 1: people make boogers, So it would be pretty amazing if
1:36
Speaker 1: we could make another kind of matter. That would be fascinating.
1:39
Speaker 1: It would be pretty cool if a fundamental discovery about
1:41
Speaker 1: the universe was literally right under our newses. You should
1:44
Speaker 1: go pick up that problem. Or what if dark matter
1:48
Speaker 1: is just boogers? That would be pretty weird to find,
1:50
Speaker 1: like huge blobs of boogers in space. You mean, like
1:53
Speaker 1: every time we sneeze, we're making dark matter. Has somebody
1:56
Speaker 1: written that scientifiction? No, but anyways, Welcome to our podcast
2:01
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
2:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we get our fingers deep deep
2:07
Speaker 1: into the mysteries of the universe and try to pick
2:10
Speaker 1: them out for you. We go all the way up
2:12
Speaker 1: there and try to understand what the tiniest little particles
2:15
Speaker 1: are made out of, how they come together in their swirling,
2:19
Speaker 1: chaotic buzz to create this bonkers universe we get to explore,
2:24
Speaker 1: and we go on a journey with you to unravel
2:26
Speaker 1: the puzzle of physics, which seeks to explain everything around
2:29
Speaker 1: us in terms of cute little mathematical stories that makes
2:33
Speaker 1: sense to us and also makes sense to you. That's right,
2:36
Speaker 1: because it is a pretty sticky universe and it's smart,
2:40
Speaker 1: readily discoverable. We have to go out there and search
2:43
Speaker 1: for it and look for it and dig through it
2:45
Speaker 1: to understand how it all works and what's it all
2:47
Speaker 1: made out of. Right, And thanks to hard work by
2:49
Speaker 1: a crazy international team of physicists, some of whom speak Flemish,
2:54
Speaker 1: we have made a lot of progress in understanding the
2:56
Speaker 1: nature of the universe, in sorting out how all these
3:00
Speaker 1: little particles we've together to make the universe that we
3:04
Speaker 1: experience at our macroscopic scale. And it's a pretty crazy
3:07
Speaker 1: story they tell about how they all come together. Yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: we've discovered that everything that we're made out of were
3:13
Speaker 1: made out of atoms, and atoms are made out of
3:14
Speaker 1: electrons and protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are
3:17
Speaker 1: made out of quarks, and all those particles are swimming
3:20
Speaker 1: through the universe in quantum fields, interacting with each other
3:24
Speaker 1: and to create the amazing universe we all live in.
3:27
Speaker 1: And one particle is at the heart of all of it,
3:30
Speaker 1: revealed only in the last ten years or so by
3:33
Speaker 1: collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson was
3:36
Speaker 1: the last piece of the Standard Model and one the
3:39
Speaker 1: answers a lot of really deep questions about the nature
3:42
Speaker 1: of stuff and the nature of matter and why things
3:45
Speaker 1: have mass at all. Yeah, it's the famous Higgs boson.
3:49
Speaker 1: I would say it's probably the second most famous fundamental particle.
3:52
Speaker 1: What do you think, Daniel, after the after the that's
3:56
Speaker 1: not it, After the electron. I think, you know, probably
3:58
Speaker 1: electron is the most famous fundamental particle. But I would
4:01
Speaker 1: say the Higgs boson is right up there, because you know,
4:03
Speaker 1: people know protons and neutrons, but they're not fundamental. That's true. Yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: I was going to guess photon, but electron is a
4:09
Speaker 1: good candidate. Also, probably up there in the like a
4:12
Speaker 1: list particles is Higgs boson, photons, and electrons. Yeah, maybe
4:16
Speaker 1: the Higgs is more like a C list particle after
4:19
Speaker 1: the photon and electron. Maybe it's sort of like the
4:22
Speaker 1: behind the scenes mover and shaker that nobody really knows,
4:25
Speaker 1: you know, I see, he's the Kevin Faggy of the
4:29
Speaker 1: real universe. Who's that I don't even know that name.
4:34
Speaker 1: He's the higgs Boson of Marvel movies, or the Higgs
4:39
Speaker 1: Boson is the Kevin Figgy of the particle universe. Yeah,
4:42
Speaker 1: either way, it holds everything together and digit weight. But
4:46
Speaker 1: it is true that the Higgs boson plays a very
4:48
Speaker 1: special role in this crazy dance of the particles due
4:51
Speaker 1: to make our reality. But it does so because of
4:54
Speaker 1: a really strange and special property that it has that
4:57
Speaker 1: no other particle has that makes it really kind of weird. Sing.
5:02
Speaker 1: So it's because it has this weird property that it
5:04
Speaker 1: does what it does, or it just does what it
5:06
Speaker 1: does and it has this weird property. It couldn't do
5:08
Speaker 1: what it does without this weird property. This is what
5:11
Speaker 1: gives it its superpower. It couldn't create mass for all
5:14
Speaker 1: the other particles without this really strange thing that it
5:17
Speaker 1: does that no other particle in the universe can do. Yeah,
5:22
Speaker 1: and this interesting property has something to do with headwear
5:26
Speaker 1: app that's right, only because physicists that we are creative
5:30
Speaker 1: people mathematically are always seeming to come up short when
5:34
Speaker 1: it's time to name things. So there's a special mathematical
5:37
Speaker 1: function that only the Higgs boson follows, and it has
5:41
Speaker 1: a bit of a weird shape, So physicists looked around
5:44
Speaker 1: for something that had a sort of similar shape and
5:46
Speaker 1: give it that name. And so today on the program,
5:48
Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question, what does a Mexican had
5:56
Speaker 1: have to do with a higgs Boson? Sorry, I mean
5:59
Speaker 1: the higgs boson, not a higgs boson. There's not just
6:02
Speaker 1: like thousands and thousands of higgs bosons out there. There's
6:05
Speaker 1: just the one. There's just an infinity amount potentially, but
6:09
Speaker 1: they're all the same one. Yeah, it's the higgs boson,
6:14
Speaker 1: even though it's a celess particle. I guess we should
6:16
Speaker 1: still call it the Higgs boson. Well, yeah, I mean
6:19
Speaker 1: you are the Jorge Cham right, not just a Jorge
6:22
Speaker 1: Cham Are there more of you? I think there are
6:24
Speaker 1: others in the world. Yeah, you wouldn't think it's a
6:26
Speaker 1: common name, but I think it's It's happened more than once. Really,
6:29
Speaker 1: have you gotten together online? Hang out the Jorge Chan
6:32
Speaker 1: fast And I don't want to create a matter antimatter
6:36
Speaker 1: annihilation or anything. What if it is the same meat,
6:38
Speaker 1: but it's just from another universe. You want to avoid
6:40
Speaker 1: those paradoxes. You could punch a hole in the multiverse.
6:43
Speaker 1: Man travel the other dimensions. It's just a bad science
6:46
Speaker 1: fiction movie I see. And then those other universes that
6:49
Speaker 1: actually an Argentinian hat that the Higgs boson wears, or
6:53
Speaker 1: maybe a Serbian hat or Russian hat. Yeah, it could be. Well.
6:57
Speaker 1: I have actually met another Daniel Whiteson, not in real
7:00
Speaker 1: life but online. Oh really, were they cooler or less
7:04
Speaker 1: cooler than you? They were definitely cooler. I'm at minimum
7:06
Speaker 1: cool value. He is a quite accomplished artist, actually living
7:10
Speaker 1: in London. Turns out to be a very distant relative.
7:14
Speaker 1: But it does sculpture and painting, and it's a it's
7:16
Speaker 1: great stuff. People emailed me and said, wow, I love
7:19
Speaker 1: your paintings, and you're like, thank you. I do paint
7:23
Speaker 1: in my spare time in between physics experiment. Let me
7:26
Speaker 1: refer you to the Artistic Bureau of the Daniel Whiteson firm.
7:31
Speaker 1: My colleague here, you've only found one. I mean, no offense,
7:33
Speaker 1: but I would think that you have a more common
7:35
Speaker 1: name than needed. There might be more than two of
7:37
Speaker 1: you know, they're only a couple of us. Weirdly, Whiteson
7:40
Speaker 1: is quite rare. Wits In much more common. But Whiteson
7:42
Speaker 1: is a weird britishization of wights and and strangely very uncommon. Wow,
7:48
Speaker 1: and you're related. We are related. Yes, Well anyways, um,
7:52
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Higgs boson and how it's one
7:54
Speaker 1: of the fundamental particles and the one that kind of
7:57
Speaker 1: binds everything together and gives things mass, and so it
8:00
Speaker 1: has a strange property related to something that looks like
8:03
Speaker 1: a Mexican hat. When physicists talk about the Higgs boson,
8:05
Speaker 1: they almost invariably showed this one figure of a mathematical
8:09
Speaker 1: function that looks like a sombrero. It looks a little
8:11
Speaker 1: bit like a Mexican hat. It's ubiquitous in physics talks.
8:14
Speaker 1: Everybody mentions it all the time, refers to it all
8:16
Speaker 1: the time. But I was wondering if people out there
8:19
Speaker 1: knew about this connection, if they understood about this special
8:23
Speaker 1: property that this Mexican hat function gives the Higgs boson.
8:26
Speaker 1: So Daniel went out there, as usual, out into the
8:28
Speaker 1: Internet to ask people the question, what does a Mexican
8:31
Speaker 1: hat have to do with a Higgs boson? If you'd
8:34
Speaker 1: like to be the subject of absurd questions from a
8:37
Speaker 1: physicist over the Internet without the opportunity to prepare, if
8:40
Speaker 1: that sounds like fun to you, and I can't imagine
8:42
Speaker 1: why it doesn't. Please participate in future episodes and write
8:46
Speaker 1: to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
8:49
Speaker 1: So think about it for a second. How would you
8:50
Speaker 1: answer this question? Here's what people have to say. So,
8:55
Speaker 1: Higgs boson are Higgs fiend probably some shape resemblance to
9:04
Speaker 1: the Mexican hat. Yeah, it could be that. Well, if
9:08
Speaker 1: the Higgs field was at a zero level of energy potential,
9:11
Speaker 1: then we couldn't have any matter or mass in the universe.
9:13
Speaker 1: And you've described it in the past as it being
9:15
Speaker 1: like a ball on a hill that's trying to roll off,
9:17
Speaker 1: and if it did reach you know, the floor the
9:19
Speaker 1: ground state, then it would end up creating vacuum decay.
9:23
Speaker 1: So I'd like to think that the Mexican hat is
9:25
Speaker 1: just a different, more kind of cultural based example of this,
9:29
Speaker 1: where you've got the ball, but instead of being on
9:31
Speaker 1: a hill, it's on the top of a sombrero. Well,
9:34
Speaker 1: I know about the Mexican had potential, and I saw
9:40
Speaker 1: the funny drawing of a Mexican hat when the something
9:47
Speaker 1: about the Higgs bossons explained, And I think that this
9:52
Speaker 1: is the only link between the Mexican hat and Higgs boson.
9:58
Speaker 1: Mexican hat, you're not Sombrero. I thought that Barretos had
10:03
Speaker 1: not to do with Higgs bosons other than that, like everything,
10:07
Speaker 1: it needs Higgs boson in order to exist. My only
10:11
Speaker 1: guess would be that maybe I've seen wave functions for
10:16
Speaker 1: quantum particles that kind of remind me of Sombrero. That's
10:20
Speaker 1: an excellent question, and I have no idea. I don't
10:24
Speaker 1: know who the Higgs pots on are, but like Mexican
10:29
Speaker 1: hats are very colorful, so i'd say that tribe we're
10:32
Speaker 1: talking about, I don't know what it is, but it
10:35
Speaker 1: might be like a colorful thing. All right. Maybe the
10:39
Speaker 1: Higgs boson is not that famous, so people didn't have
10:41
Speaker 1: no idea what there was the new Mexican hats. So
10:45
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson PR team needs to get somehow in
10:47
Speaker 1: touch with Yeah, if you get what the Mexican had,
10:52
Speaker 1: that uses because apparently it's pretty famous, maybe more so
10:55
Speaker 1: than other hats. Well, Panama hats pretty famous. Oh that's right, Yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: are you the owner of any Panama hats? Panama hat?
11:03
Speaker 1: It's not actually a Panama Are you saying it's just branding.
11:07
Speaker 1: They're not actually from Panama. Well, the native Panamenian hats
11:11
Speaker 1: are different than the one that people call Panama hats.
11:14
Speaker 1: But anyway, so it's a pretty interesting. A lot of
11:16
Speaker 1: people seem to know or think that it was some
11:18
Speaker 1: some are related to the wave function or do some
11:21
Speaker 1: sort of potential about the Higgs boson. Yeah, a lot
11:24
Speaker 1: of really informed ideas out there, some of them pretty
11:26
Speaker 1: close to the mark. Not the one about burritos, but
11:29
Speaker 1: that was a good guess. Anyway, Well, technically burritos are
11:32
Speaker 1: made also out of quarks and electrons and use the
11:36
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. Yes, every meal you had ose some of
11:40
Speaker 1: its mass to the Higgs boson. That's true. It should
11:42
Speaker 1: be getting a portion of the tips. Yeah, and if
11:45
Speaker 1: you eat the whole burrito, you definitely feel those Higgs
11:46
Speaker 1: bosons in your stomach. You get Higgs ear. But yeah,
11:49
Speaker 1: so somehow the Higgs boson has this interesting property that
11:53
Speaker 1: makes it special and it has a special shape to it.
11:55
Speaker 1: And so Daniel, let's break it down for folks, recap
11:58
Speaker 1: for us, what is the Higgs boson and what does
12:00
Speaker 1: the Higgs field? So the Higgs field is this thing
12:03
Speaker 1: that fills all of space, and we think that space
12:06
Speaker 1: actually is filled with lots of different kinds of fields.
12:09
Speaker 1: Remember that a modern view of space is not as
12:11
Speaker 1: like emptiness or nothingness, but that every point in space
12:15
Speaker 1: has quantum field, which means that it has the possibility
12:18
Speaker 1: to have particles in it. Every point in space, for example,
12:21
Speaker 1: can have an electric field or a magnetic field. It
12:24
Speaker 1: can also have a Higgs field. It's like another kind
12:27
Speaker 1: of way that space can wiggle. And in the modern
12:30
Speaker 1: view of particles and fields, we think of space having
12:33
Speaker 1: these fields in it, and particles are like wiggles in
12:36
Speaker 1: those fields. For a photon, for example, is a wiggle
12:39
Speaker 1: in the electromagnetic field, and a Higgs boson, the particle
12:43
Speaker 1: associated with the Higgs field would then be a wiggle
12:46
Speaker 1: in the Higgs field. So you might have like the
12:48
Speaker 1: Higgs field all the way through space. And when we
12:51
Speaker 1: smash particles together at the large hage On collider, we
12:54
Speaker 1: excite that field and we create a Higgs boson, which
12:56
Speaker 1: is like a little extra blob in that field, which
12:59
Speaker 1: wiggles in the dissipates. And so the Higgs field is
13:02
Speaker 1: the thing that fills all of space, and the particle
13:05
Speaker 1: is a little wiggle in that field. And it's kind
13:08
Speaker 1: of a special field because unlike some of the other fields,
13:10
Speaker 1: like the electron field or the quark fields which make
13:13
Speaker 1: up matter, this one sort of like it. It's not
13:15
Speaker 1: quite matter, right, but it gives things mass and matter. Yeah,
13:19
Speaker 1: it is really a very special field and lots of
13:21
Speaker 1: cool ways. Most of the fields that make up matter
13:24
Speaker 1: fermion fields, like quark fields and left on fields. You know,
13:27
Speaker 1: those are the things that make up the building blocks
13:30
Speaker 1: of stuff. You know, up corks and down corks make
13:33
Speaker 1: up the protons and neutrons inside our atoms and the electrons.
13:37
Speaker 1: These are all fermions. There are matter fields, and the
13:39
Speaker 1: other kind of fields are like force fields. The photon
13:43
Speaker 1: is the field for the electromagnetic force, and there are
13:46
Speaker 1: fields for the W and Z bosons which make up
13:49
Speaker 1: the weak force, and there's fields for the gluons for
13:51
Speaker 1: the strong force. And then there's the Higgs boson, which
13:54
Speaker 1: is different from all of those. It doesn't make up matter.
13:57
Speaker 1: It's not something you find in the atom. It's not
14:00
Speaker 1: stuff in that way, and it's also not really a
14:03
Speaker 1: force the way that like electromagnetism is or the weak
14:07
Speaker 1: force is, and it's also different from the other ones
14:09
Speaker 1: in that has no spin, Like electrons have spin, and
14:14
Speaker 1: photons have spin, and every other particle we've ever seen
14:17
Speaker 1: has spin. But the Higgs does not have spin. It's
14:21
Speaker 1: spin zero no matter what. Yeah, it's kind of a
14:23
Speaker 1: different field because I think I've heard mathematically that it's different.
14:27
Speaker 1: It's more like a constant the equations. Right, it's like
14:29
Speaker 1: almost like a zero dimensional field. Yeah. We call it
14:32
Speaker 1: a scale er because they can't point in any direction.
14:34
Speaker 1: It's just like a number that fills all of space.
14:37
Speaker 1: Fields can be like vectors, which, like the electromagnetic field,
14:41
Speaker 1: has value but also has a direction. Like magnetic fields
14:44
Speaker 1: also have a direction. You know, you have a magnetic
14:47
Speaker 1: field at some point in space, it's pulling in some direction.
14:49
Speaker 1: The Higgs field is just a number. It's a scale er,
14:52
Speaker 1: so mathematically is different from the other fields. And that's
14:55
Speaker 1: because it has no spin. These Higgs particles don't like
14:57
Speaker 1: spin up or spin down, or spin one underspin two.
15:01
Speaker 1: They just don't spin it all. It's just a number
15:03
Speaker 1: at every point in space, right, And it's this sort
15:06
Speaker 1: of number that gives other particles mass. Like without this field,
15:10
Speaker 1: particles wouldn't have the mass that they have. Yeah, the
15:12
Speaker 1: Higgs not only has all these weird special properties, but
15:15
Speaker 1: also it interacts with the other particles. So these fields
15:18
Speaker 1: exist through all of space, but they don't just like
15:21
Speaker 1: hang out on top of each other. They do interact
15:23
Speaker 1: with each other. So, for example, of the electromagnetic field
15:26
Speaker 1: interacts with every other field that has a charge. So
15:29
Speaker 1: that's why electrons can push against each other using electromagnetism.
15:33
Speaker 1: So these fields somehow connect to each other, and the
15:35
Speaker 1: Higgs field interacts with all the other fields where the
15:38
Speaker 1: particles have mass. The Higgs field interacts with a lot
15:41
Speaker 1: of these particles, and the way it interacts with them
15:45
Speaker 1: changes the way the particles move as if they had mass. Yeah, well,
15:50
Speaker 1: I guess that all these fields do sit on top
15:52
Speaker 1: of each other, right, It's just that some kind of
15:54
Speaker 1: interact with each other and some don't. Like there are
15:56
Speaker 1: some fields that don't talk to other fields at all,
15:58
Speaker 1: but there are some that sit on top of each
15:59
Speaker 1: other there, but they do sort of like if you
16:01
Speaker 1: do something in one, it's going to affect the others. Yeah,
16:03
Speaker 1: you're right, they're all on top of each other. Like
16:05
Speaker 1: every point in space has all of the fields. Some
16:08
Speaker 1: of them ignore each other, like the neutrino, for example,
16:10
Speaker 1: totally ignores the electromagnetic field, and some of them interact
16:14
Speaker 1: with each other so that energy can move between them,
16:16
Speaker 1: so energy can move from the photon field to the
16:18
Speaker 1: electron field and back and forth, this kind of stuff.
16:21
Speaker 1: Some of them don't interact and some of them do,
16:23
Speaker 1: and the Higgs interacts with a lot of them. So
16:25
Speaker 1: the ones that it does interact with are the ones
16:28
Speaker 1: that we say have mass, Like if it doesn't interact
16:30
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, then we say doesn't have mass. Yeah,
16:33
Speaker 1: that's right. And we talked about this once on our
16:34
Speaker 1: episode about renormalization, about what it really means for particles
16:38
Speaker 1: to have mass. Without the Higgs, all the particles in
16:41
Speaker 1: the universe would be massless, Like electrons would fly through
16:44
Speaker 1: the universe without mass, and so with the w boson,
16:47
Speaker 1: and so would all of the particles. They would have
16:49
Speaker 1: no mass. Now you add the Higgs field to the universe,
16:52
Speaker 1: and it changes the way these particles moved through the universe,
16:56
Speaker 1: sort of the way like a photon moves through matter
16:59
Speaker 1: different then it moves through a vacuum like it gets
17:01
Speaker 1: absorbed by the atoms and re emitted. It effectively moves
17:05
Speaker 1: slower through the universe because it's moving through matter in
17:08
Speaker 1: the same way. All the particles now move through space
17:10
Speaker 1: differently because they're busy interacting with the Higgs field, and
17:13
Speaker 1: the Higgs field interacts with these particles differently than every
17:16
Speaker 1: other kind of interaction, and that interaction is exactly the
17:19
Speaker 1: same as if the Higgs field wasn't there, but the
17:22
Speaker 1: particles had mass. So in one sense we say, truly
17:26
Speaker 1: the particles and have no mass. Their mass comes from
17:29
Speaker 1: this interaction with the Higgs field, like the sort of
17:31
Speaker 1: the bear. The pure particle on its own actually has
17:34
Speaker 1: no mass, but it moves through space as if it
17:37
Speaker 1: did have mass because it's busy interacting with this field.
17:42
Speaker 1: I feel like the run that's a very roundabout way
17:44
Speaker 1: of putting it. I think what he's saying is that
17:46
Speaker 1: what we call mass is actually the interaction of these
17:49
Speaker 1: particles with the Higgs field. It's one way to have mass.
17:52
Speaker 1: There are other ways you could have mass, but this
17:55
Speaker 1: is one way that particles can get mass, and this
17:57
Speaker 1: is the way that all the particles were familiar with
17:59
Speaker 1: get mass. Dark matter has mass, but we're pretty sure
18:03
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually get mass through the Higgs field. So
18:05
Speaker 1: you might be tempted to say, this is what mass means,
18:08
Speaker 1: this is what it means to have mass. We just
18:10
Speaker 1: like reveal the nature of mass. But that's not quite
18:13
Speaker 1: true because there are other ways to get mass. So
18:16
Speaker 1: this is one way in which particles can get mass,
18:18
Speaker 1: but maybe not the only way. Well, I think it
18:21
Speaker 1: sort of maybe depends. Maybe what do you mean by mass? Right, Like,
18:24
Speaker 1: there's inertial mass, there's gravitational mass, and all masses to
18:27
Speaker 1: energy really at the end. So I guess maybe what
18:30
Speaker 1: do you mean by mass in this case? Is it
18:32
Speaker 1: like the mass that you feel when you try to
18:34
Speaker 1: push it and move it. Is it only the mass
18:36
Speaker 1: related to moving? Yeah, here we're talking about inertial mass.
18:39
Speaker 1: We're talking about what it takes to get a particle moving.
18:41
Speaker 1: How a particle flies through space. You know how much
18:43
Speaker 1: force is required to accelerate it. For example, the mass
18:46
Speaker 1: that goes into like the equations of motions for a particle.
18:50
Speaker 1: And so if a particle has these interactions, then it
18:53
Speaker 1: changes how it gets from point A to point B.
18:55
Speaker 1: And that is different if a particle interacts with the
18:57
Speaker 1: Higgs field and if it doesn't and there are other
19:00
Speaker 1: ways to get inertial mass, there probably are other ways
19:02
Speaker 1: to get initial mass. We've never discovered them, but we
19:05
Speaker 1: suspect that there are. For example, dark matter, we know
19:07
Speaker 1: it has some mass, but we don't understand how it
19:10
Speaker 1: gets mass, and we don't think it interacts with the
19:12
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, so it can't get its mass from the Higgs.
19:15
Speaker 1: And also people wonder about neutrinos. Neutrinos might be a
19:19
Speaker 1: really different kind of particle, and it might be myrono particles,
19:22
Speaker 1: which means that they are their own antiparticle, which means
19:25
Speaker 1: they can't get their mass from the Higgs. So there
19:28
Speaker 1: might be other ways to get mass. Interesting, but we
19:31
Speaker 1: don't know what they are or I have any ideas
19:33
Speaker 1: with the other way. We have some ideas, but we've
19:35
Speaker 1: never seen them. So the Higgs boson is sort of
19:37
Speaker 1: the only way we know for fundamental particles to get mass,
19:40
Speaker 1: but we do have some ideas for other ways it
19:42
Speaker 1: might happen. I see. But at least you know, as
19:45
Speaker 1: far as the universe is concerned, at least our universe
19:48
Speaker 1: or matter particles, that the stuff we're kind of made
19:50
Speaker 1: out of the Higgs field. It is how we get
19:53
Speaker 1: inertial mass, and without it we would all be flying
19:55
Speaker 1: around at the speed of light. Hey, which doesn't sound
19:58
Speaker 1: too bad, you know, and get play. This is much quicker. Yeah. Yeah,
20:03
Speaker 1: The Higgs is a big bummer, let's be honest. Slows
20:06
Speaker 1: the party down. It weighs me down. It really weighs
20:08
Speaker 1: on me. It's a massive bummer. All right. Well, let's
20:10
Speaker 1: get into this special property of the Higgs that makes
20:13
Speaker 1: it super special, and let's see what it has to
20:15
Speaker 1: do with a Mexican hat. But first, let's take a
20:18
Speaker 1: quick break. All right. We're talking about the Higgs boson
20:33
Speaker 1: and how it's the universe's party pooper. Let's be honest.
20:37
Speaker 1: Without the Higgs, we'd all be zipping around at the
20:40
Speaker 1: speed of light. Things we get done much faster, all right.
20:43
Speaker 1: Let me speak up in defense of the Higgs though.
20:45
Speaker 1: You know, at your party, when somebody hands your present
20:47
Speaker 1: and it feels really good and heavy, you're like, oh,
20:50
Speaker 1: this is something good. That's also because of the Higgs boson.
20:55
Speaker 1: Good things coming small packages. The lighter it is, the
20:59
Speaker 1: more interesting it could be. Cash. Cash is pretty light.
21:02
Speaker 1: That's always a nice gift, all right, I'm gonna put
21:04
Speaker 1: you down on my Christmas list for an empty box
21:06
Speaker 1: for that's right. Well it's not empty. We have a
21:10
Speaker 1: dark matter. So here you go, one particle of dark
21:13
Speaker 1: matter and that shot. My shopping is done for Jorge. Yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: there you go. I'm an easy body. But yeah, we're
21:18
Speaker 1: talking about the Higgs boson and the Higgs field and
21:21
Speaker 1: how it's sort of different. I mean, we know it
21:23
Speaker 1: gives mass to most of the matter particles that we
21:26
Speaker 1: know about. There might be other ways to get mass,
21:28
Speaker 1: but the Higgs, at least as far as we're going serring,
21:30
Speaker 1: it's pretty fundamental, pretty important to our everyday experience. And
21:35
Speaker 1: you're saying that this kind of specialness is because of
21:38
Speaker 1: some mathematical property of it. That's right. Most of the
21:41
Speaker 1: fields that are out there in the universe, the photon field,
21:44
Speaker 1: the electron field. If you have a chunk of space
21:46
Speaker 1: that's empty, you don't have any particles in it, we
21:49
Speaker 1: call that vacuum. It still has those fields in it,
21:51
Speaker 1: but those fields are like as close to zero as
21:54
Speaker 1: they can be, sort of like a parking lot. It
21:57
Speaker 1: can have cars in it, but it doesn't currently have
22:00
Speaker 1: like slots where you could put cars, and that's where
22:02
Speaker 1: those fields like to relax to. It's sort of like
22:04
Speaker 1: their equilibrium, their default value of value of what I guess,
22:08
Speaker 1: just like general excitability or like energy of the field.
22:12
Speaker 1: Like we talked about how the Higgs field, what is it?
22:15
Speaker 1: It's a number through all of space, just like an
22:18
Speaker 1: electric field. Right, you can measure an electric field has
22:21
Speaker 1: a certain value over here in a certain value over there.
22:23
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the value of the field. Electric
22:26
Speaker 1: fields like to be close to zero. If you pull
22:28
Speaker 1: as much energy as you can out of space, electric
22:31
Speaker 1: fields relax down to zero. That's like the lowest energy
22:34
Speaker 1: configuration for an electric field. It's at zero value of
22:38
Speaker 1: the field, there's no electric field. So most of the
22:40
Speaker 1: fields are like that, and it sort of makes sense,
22:42
Speaker 1: and you can think about it in your head, like
22:44
Speaker 1: the field has no value when there's no particles there
22:46
Speaker 1: and you add energy and then you get particles. Those
22:49
Speaker 1: that energy goes into ripples of the field, which then
22:52
Speaker 1: wiggle around and move, and you can think about those
22:54
Speaker 1: as particles, and that sort of makes some sense, even
22:57
Speaker 1: in this sort of bonkers view of particles. Is just
22:59
Speaker 1: like ripples in quantum fields. So that's how most fields are,
23:03
Speaker 1: but the Higgs field is different. When it relaxes its
23:06
Speaker 1: lowest energy configuration, when you like take all the particles out,
23:10
Speaker 1: the vacuum state is at a very large value of
23:14
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, some huge number. So you have a
23:16
Speaker 1: chunk of space out there with nothing and no particles.
23:19
Speaker 1: It's filled with a very strong Higgs field, meaning like
23:23
Speaker 1: the Higgs field everywhere, even in empty space, has some
23:28
Speaker 1: sort of like excitability about it, or some energy or
23:31
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of empt up. It's not. It doesn't
23:33
Speaker 1: like relax to zero. It doesn't relax to zero. And
23:36
Speaker 1: the confusing thing is that's its lowest energy state. Like
23:39
Speaker 1: when it relaxes, when you pull as much energy out
23:41
Speaker 1: as possible, it doesn't relax down to zero. It relaxes
23:45
Speaker 1: down to this weird non zero value that is the
23:48
Speaker 1: minimum energy configuration of the Higgs field at this very
23:52
Speaker 1: large value. It's sort of like if you pull all
23:54
Speaker 1: the energy out of space and you discovered wow, and
23:57
Speaker 1: now it has a very strong electric field in it,
23:59
Speaker 1: it would be very strange. Yeah, it would be like
24:01
Speaker 1: discovering the whole universe has like a charge to it almost.
24:04
Speaker 1: But the Higgs field you're saying it can go to
24:06
Speaker 1: zero or doesn't like to go to zero. It can
24:09
Speaker 1: go to zero, but it doesn't like to And the
24:11
Speaker 1: way to think about this is to think about how
24:13
Speaker 1: things move, and when things move, there's a balance always
24:17
Speaker 1: between kinetic energy, which is like the energy of motion,
24:20
Speaker 1: and potential energy. And you're used to thinking about this
24:22
Speaker 1: when you think about like a string, for example, take
24:25
Speaker 1: a string on a guitar. Its lowest energy state, when
24:28
Speaker 1: it's relaxed, you haven't plucked it, is that it's just straight.
24:31
Speaker 1: Right now, if you pull on the string, you deform it,
24:34
Speaker 1: You bend the string, then it has energy and even
24:36
Speaker 1: before you let it go, it has energy in it
24:38
Speaker 1: because of its arrangement, because of its configuration, because it's
24:42
Speaker 1: it's new position being deformed from straight. And we call
24:45
Speaker 1: that potential energy, sort of like if you put a
24:48
Speaker 1: book on a shelf that has gravitational potential energy. So
24:51
Speaker 1: you pull on the string, it has potential energy. You
24:53
Speaker 1: let it go, it vibrates back and forth. That's kinetic energy, right,
24:57
Speaker 1: So it's oscillating. So now this string has a lot
24:59
Speaker 1: of energy. It's silating back and forth. But when the
25:01
Speaker 1: energy dissipates out of the string into something else, you know,
25:04
Speaker 1: heat of the room or whatever. It relaxes back down
25:07
Speaker 1: to the lowest potential energy state, which is when the
25:10
Speaker 1: string is flat. So that's the way a normal field operates.
25:13
Speaker 1: The Higgs field is weird because it likes to be deformed.
25:17
Speaker 1: It relaxes its lowest energy state. Is like having a
25:20
Speaker 1: string that's bent instead of straight, or maybe like having
25:23
Speaker 1: a string that never stops vibrating. So that kind of
25:26
Speaker 1: what you mean, like it's even if it's just sitting
25:28
Speaker 1: there for a long time, it will still have a
25:29
Speaker 1: little bit of a hump to it because the vibration
25:32
Speaker 1: is energy, is kinetic energy. That would mean you have
25:35
Speaker 1: like particles in there. We're talking about what happens when
25:37
Speaker 1: there's no motion, when there's no particles, When you have
25:39
Speaker 1: space without particles in it, we're talking about the vacuum state.
25:42
Speaker 1: The lowest energy configuration is when the field has a
25:45
Speaker 1: large value, and that's because that's actually the place where
25:48
Speaker 1: it has the smallest potential energy. And that's where this
25:51
Speaker 1: weird Mexican half function comes in. It explains the shape
25:55
Speaker 1: of the potential energy and why it likes to minimize
25:58
Speaker 1: at a value very far zero field. Well, maybe a
26:02
Speaker 1: step back a little bit too. It would it be
26:04
Speaker 1: weird if the Higgs boson had a zero value, because like,
26:07
Speaker 1: if the Higgs boson or Higgs field had a zero
26:10
Speaker 1: was zero anywhere, it would mean that whatever is moving
26:12
Speaker 1: through there had zero mass. Is that true? If the
26:15
Speaker 1: Higgs minimized at zero, then you're right, everything in the
26:17
Speaker 1: universe would be massless. It's only because the Higgs has
26:21
Speaker 1: this non zero standard value that things get mass. It's
26:25
Speaker 1: from the value of the Higgs field that things have massed.
26:28
Speaker 1: So in a universe where the Higgs field goes to zero,
26:31
Speaker 1: then everything is massless. Interesting, But the Higgs field doesn't
26:35
Speaker 1: go to zero ever, right, Like it has this kind
26:37
Speaker 1: of floor to it. Yeah, exactly, It doesn't like to
26:40
Speaker 1: go to zero. It can potentially ascilly down to zero temporarily,
26:44
Speaker 1: sort of like a string convibrating, get into a weird configuration.
26:48
Speaker 1: But when it relaxes, it likes to go to this
26:50
Speaker 1: really weird non zero value. And it's only because of
26:53
Speaker 1: that that all these other particles have mass. So because
26:56
Speaker 1: the Higgs likes to chill out of this very intense state,
27:00
Speaker 1: all the other particles get mass. Interesting, and this is
27:03
Speaker 1: the only field that we know that has a non
27:06
Speaker 1: zero relaxed state. It's the only one exactly, We've never
27:10
Speaker 1: met another field like this, and this is the way
27:12
Speaker 1: that it happens. This is sort of like the theoretical discovery.
27:14
Speaker 1: People were wondering, like, jeez, how can we get mass
27:17
Speaker 1: these particles? And Higgs and the other folks came up
27:19
Speaker 1: with this idea. They were like, well, what if there's
27:21
Speaker 1: a really strange field that chills out and when it relaxes,
27:25
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually go to zero. It just sort of
27:27
Speaker 1: like fills the universe with itself at a really intense
27:30
Speaker 1: value that would mathematically accomplish what we needed. But it
27:34
Speaker 1: was a very very strange idea at the time, and
27:36
Speaker 1: it's still kind of bizarre, yeah, because it's also the only,
27:39
Speaker 1: as you said, scaler field, right, the only sort of
27:42
Speaker 1: like non directional field. It's almost like a clusion the equation.
27:47
Speaker 1: You can put that on your Yelp review for the universe.
27:49
Speaker 1: You're like this, I don't know, a little ugly. The
27:52
Speaker 1: writer should have come up with a better plot point,
27:54
Speaker 1: I mean, like a clusion. Like they were looking at
27:55
Speaker 1: the equation and they say, hey, we had a number here,
27:58
Speaker 1: it's going to make things work, and putting another where
28:00
Speaker 1: there means that there's a scalar field in the universe. Yeah,
28:03
Speaker 1: you can think of it like a clue. It's also
28:05
Speaker 1: sort of beautiful, like things in the universe don't really
28:08
Speaker 1: make sense without it. And then you come up with
28:10
Speaker 1: this one really strange but kind of simple idea and
28:13
Speaker 1: it all clicks together like mathematically boom. It explains why
28:17
Speaker 1: the w's have mass and the Z has mass and
28:20
Speaker 1: the photon doesn't. It explains how all the other particles
28:23
Speaker 1: get mass. It's very weird, you're right, and it makes
28:25
Speaker 1: this prediction that there's this new field through all of
28:28
Speaker 1: space that's different from every other field we've ever seen.
28:31
Speaker 1: But it does bring all the mathematics together to explain
28:35
Speaker 1: what we're seeing, and that's why it was such an
28:36
Speaker 1: attractive idea theoretically. So you're saying that this sort of
28:39
Speaker 1: like like a non zero like kind of buzz or
28:43
Speaker 1: pull string of the Higgs boson this energy that it has,
28:47
Speaker 1: and it's a default valley somehow looks like a Mexican head.
28:50
Speaker 1: How does that come about? Well, in order to understand
28:52
Speaker 1: where a field will relax to. You need to think
28:55
Speaker 1: about the shape of its potential, and so most fields
28:59
Speaker 1: their men mum value where the potential is lowest, which
29:02
Speaker 1: means where they like to relax to is at the
29:04
Speaker 1: value of the field being zero. You can think of
29:06
Speaker 1: the penantilla as being just like a cup, and at
29:09
Speaker 1: the center is the zero value of the field. And if,
29:11
Speaker 1: for example, you put a ball in there, it would
29:13
Speaker 1: roll down and it would relax at the bottom of
29:15
Speaker 1: the cup, and that's what most fields do. And the
29:17
Speaker 1: Higgs field, however, is weird. It's sort of like a cup,
29:21
Speaker 1: but then in the very center of the cup it
29:23
Speaker 1: has a big bump, maybe sort of like the bottom
29:25
Speaker 1: of a wine bottle, you know. Sometimes it has that
29:27
Speaker 1: bump in it for your thumb. What would happen if
29:29
Speaker 1: you put a ball in there, Well, it might bounce
29:32
Speaker 1: around a little bit and occasionally get to the center,
29:34
Speaker 1: but it would typically roll off away from the center
29:38
Speaker 1: and settle down in the valley. So the lowest point
29:41
Speaker 1: of the Higgs potential is not at zero. It has
29:43
Speaker 1: this weird shape. We have a bump in the middle
29:46
Speaker 1: and then sort of like a circle around the middle
29:49
Speaker 1: that has this minimum value in it before it rises
29:51
Speaker 1: up again. Some people talk about this like it's the
29:54
Speaker 1: bottom of a wine bottle. Other people call this the
29:56
Speaker 1: Mexican hat shape because the sombrero sort of has a
29:59
Speaker 1: point in the middle and then rises on the outside. Right,
30:02
Speaker 1: it's kind of like there's almost like a little trench
30:05
Speaker 1: kind of that goes in a circle, and that's where
30:07
Speaker 1: the energy instead of like going to the center. That's
30:10
Speaker 1: shaped like there's a groove that goes around in a circle,
30:12
Speaker 1: and so that's where the energy kind of tends to go. Yeah,
30:15
Speaker 1: if you have minimum energy, you have to head for
30:18
Speaker 1: low potential right where the field relaxes when there's no
30:21
Speaker 1: particles around. It's no actual Higgs bosons or no hadron
30:25
Speaker 1: colliders smashing particles together and make energy density. If you
30:28
Speaker 1: have vacuums, you empty space. Everything has to relax to
30:31
Speaker 1: its lowest energy value. The lowest energy value for the
30:34
Speaker 1: Higgs is not at field equal zero's that's the field
30:37
Speaker 1: equals some other very high value. Because that's where this
30:41
Speaker 1: Mexican hat has its lowest dip. It doesn't dip down
30:44
Speaker 1: in the middle where the field is zero. It dips
30:46
Speaker 1: down as you say in this trench around the middle,
30:49
Speaker 1: which is very far from zero because there's like a
30:51
Speaker 1: bump in the middle that doesn't let it settle in
30:53
Speaker 1: the middle. I guess the question is what middle of
30:55
Speaker 1: are we talking about? Like I can see it in
30:58
Speaker 1: my head. It sort of looks like a Mexican hat
30:59
Speaker 1: or the bottom of a wine bottle. But I guess
31:02
Speaker 1: the question is what are we looking at? What are
31:04
Speaker 1: we plotting in this shape? So we're plotting the value
31:07
Speaker 1: of the Higgs field itself. That's the vertical value. So
31:11
Speaker 1: we're planting the value of the Higgs field itself. That's
31:13
Speaker 1: like the horizontal values, the things that are like sort
31:16
Speaker 1: of the directions of the hat. And then the vertical
31:19
Speaker 1: value is the potential energy. So the Higgs field has
31:22
Speaker 1: different potential energies for different values of the field, and
31:25
Speaker 1: most fields have minimum potential energy at field equal zero.
31:29
Speaker 1: This one, you get to a minimum in the field
31:32
Speaker 1: as you move away from the value of the Higgs
31:34
Speaker 1: field itself. M But I thought the Higgs field was scaler,
31:38
Speaker 1: meaning like it's just a number. How can I have
31:40
Speaker 1: two dimensions? Yeah, it is the scaler, but it's actually
31:42
Speaker 1: a complex scale er. It's not a real number. It
31:46
Speaker 1: has a real and an imaginary part. So it's sort
31:49
Speaker 1: of like there are two directions in the Higgs field.
31:52
Speaker 1: It's just a number, but it's actually a vector in
31:54
Speaker 1: complex space. Yeah, I think I think you're saying that
31:57
Speaker 1: some of this potential has another the engine. I guess
32:00
Speaker 1: in complex imaginary space, because I guess it's quantum, right,
32:04
Speaker 1: and it's like a way function, and so therefore it
32:06
Speaker 1: has this sort of you know, imaginary dimension. Yeah, there's
32:10
Speaker 1: a real and imaginary part, just like every complex number,
32:13
Speaker 1: you know, like seven plus two I there's really two
32:16
Speaker 1: numbers there that are sort of independent from each other.
32:19
Speaker 1: But you could also just think about this in one dimension,
32:21
Speaker 1: you know, you could just think about like having a
32:23
Speaker 1: V shape potential versus having like a W shaped potential.
32:27
Speaker 1: If you have a W shaped potential where the center
32:30
Speaker 1: of the WS at zero, then you're gonna want to
32:32
Speaker 1: relax down to a value that's away from zero, because
32:35
Speaker 1: the trenches the bottoms of the W are away from
32:38
Speaker 1: the zero value of the field. And that's what this
32:41
Speaker 1: field likes to do. Interesting, it doesn't like to relax
32:44
Speaker 1: to zero. It likes to relax it's some other value
32:47
Speaker 1: in the trenches of the Mexican head. And it's kind
32:50
Speaker 1: of interesting because I've heard that it wasn't always like that,
32:53
Speaker 1: Like maybe at the beginning of the universe is when
32:55
Speaker 1: this Mexican head form. Yeah, we don't exactly know what
32:58
Speaker 1: happened in the very beginning of universe, but we think
33:01
Speaker 1: that as the universe cooled, this potential was sort of revealed.
33:05
Speaker 1: Like if the whole universe is a higher temperature, it's
33:07
Speaker 1: much denser, it's crazier than we think that this potential
33:11
Speaker 1: originally in the early universe had a different shape. It
33:13
Speaker 1: was more like a V or like a U where
33:16
Speaker 1: it minimizes at the zero value. And then as the
33:18
Speaker 1: universe cools, we think it's sort of relaxed down to
33:22
Speaker 1: having this shape. And the interesting thing is the Higgs
33:25
Speaker 1: field might have started out at the center, right, It
33:28
Speaker 1: might have started out at zero value, and then as
33:31
Speaker 1: the universe cooled, it had to sort of like roll
33:33
Speaker 1: down this new bump in the center of its potential
33:36
Speaker 1: towards a larger value of the field. All right, So
33:39
Speaker 1: then maybe the universe it's it's almost like at some
33:41
Speaker 1: point in the beginning of the universe, the universe somehow
33:44
Speaker 1: got mass like it needs to be massless everything, at
33:47
Speaker 1: least the matter particles. And then something happened to this
33:49
Speaker 1: field that made suddenly everything haf massed exactly. And that's
33:53
Speaker 1: the moment in the universe when electromagnetism and the weak
33:57
Speaker 1: force split off from each other. Because that's what the
33:59
Speaker 1: Higgs boson does, is it breaks this symmetry between electromagnetism
34:03
Speaker 1: and the weak force, which we think are really all
34:05
Speaker 1: just one sort of big, happy force. But the W
34:08
Speaker 1: and the Z particles, which carry the information for the
34:11
Speaker 1: weak force, they're really really massive. And that happened at
34:14
Speaker 1: that moment when the Higgs boson sort of rolled away
34:16
Speaker 1: from the middle and settled at this large value. And
34:20
Speaker 1: we call that electric weak symmetry breaking. So there was
34:22
Speaker 1: a time in the early universe when we think the
34:25
Speaker 1: weak force was as powerful as electricity and magnetism, and
34:28
Speaker 1: then the Higgs broke it. Oh, man, that Higgs. What
34:32
Speaker 1: a bully man the week fourth week. It's just doing
34:36
Speaker 1: its job, man, it's just doing its job. But we
34:38
Speaker 1: think of it this also in terms of like phase transitions,
34:41
Speaker 1: Like the universe was very different before this and very
34:44
Speaker 1: different after this moment, and you know people. You might
34:47
Speaker 1: hear people talking about like how there were different laws
34:49
Speaker 1: of physics before this phase transition or something, and that's
34:53
Speaker 1: because you know, these things control how things operated. The
34:56
Speaker 1: things have no mass than the weak force is very
34:59
Speaker 1: very powerful, than the effective laws of physics, the things
35:01
Speaker 1: we experience would be very different. Deep down, there's still
35:04
Speaker 1: like the basic laws of physics underneath everything that are
35:07
Speaker 1: controlling how this happens. Those don't change, but you know,
35:10
Speaker 1: the way the things end up interacting and the way
35:13
Speaker 1: they come together to form complex matter, that does change
35:17
Speaker 1: when you have one of these like big moments in
35:19
Speaker 1: the universe. So that's why they call it like a
35:21
Speaker 1: phase transition in the laws of physics, like things click
35:24
Speaker 1: together differently, depending maybe on the size of the universe
35:27
Speaker 1: or or the density of it. All right, well, let's
35:30
Speaker 1: get into what this all means. Why is it important
35:33
Speaker 1: that the Higgs field has this potential shape like a
35:36
Speaker 1: Mexican head. So let's get into that. But first let's
35:38
Speaker 1: take another quick break. All Right, we're talking about the
35:53
Speaker 1: Higgs field, and Daniel, you're telling me that it's weird
35:56
Speaker 1: because the Higgs field relaxes to a value that's not zero.
36:00
Speaker 1: Most fields like to relax to zero. They like to
36:02
Speaker 1: chill out and just not do any work, or they
36:05
Speaker 1: like to just do nothing. But the Higgs field is
36:08
Speaker 1: weird because it relaxes to sort of like an ampt
36:11
Speaker 1: up value, like it's ready to go at all times. Yeah,
36:14
Speaker 1: it's sort of like you go into a room of
36:16
Speaker 1: kindergarteners napping and they're all laying on mats on the floor,
36:20
Speaker 1: but the Higgs field is sort of like up on
36:21
Speaker 1: the ceiling and you're like, really, that's where you like
36:24
Speaker 1: to relax. What kid is that one? The one on
36:28
Speaker 1: the ceiling that's Peter Higgs as a toddler. It's like
36:32
Speaker 1: it's ready to go. But even though it's not moving,
36:35
Speaker 1: what we're just saying, it's like it's ready. It's ready
36:37
Speaker 1: for action. It's ready for action. And the thing to
36:39
Speaker 1: avoid being confused about is that it doesn't have energy
36:41
Speaker 1: in it. That's where it relaxes when it doesn't have energy.
36:45
Speaker 1: You know, the universe with minimum energy has a huge
36:48
Speaker 1: value of the Higgs field. It's a really bizarre concept.
36:51
Speaker 1: It really breaks a lot of the assumptions we make
36:53
Speaker 1: in the intuition we have like connecting like fields and energy,
36:57
Speaker 1: and so it's this number, this this number that's not
37:00
Speaker 1: zero that gives things mass because what happens like as
37:03
Speaker 1: a particle moves through this field, it runs into this
37:05
Speaker 1: number or this number slows the particle down because the
37:09
Speaker 1: Higgs field has this value and the particles interact with
37:13
Speaker 1: the field, then it's everywhere, And so as an electron
37:15
Speaker 1: flies through the universe, it experiences this Higgs field. It's
37:18
Speaker 1: sort of like the only way we can tell that
37:21
Speaker 1: the field is there is because it has this effect
37:24
Speaker 1: on all the particles that were out there. So we
37:26
Speaker 1: can like sort of detect the existence of this Higgs
37:29
Speaker 1: field filling space because it changes the way particles move
37:33
Speaker 1: as if they have mass. Interesting, and so I guess
37:36
Speaker 1: the bigger question is what does it all mean? Like
37:39
Speaker 1: why is the Higgs field like that? Why doesn't it
37:43
Speaker 1: have a zero value when it's relaxed, Like what what's
37:46
Speaker 1: making it that way? You can look at it from
37:47
Speaker 1: a few different ways, like theoretically, this is like the
37:51
Speaker 1: simplest possible way to solve this problem. You know, they say, well,
37:55
Speaker 1: what do we need this particle to do in order
37:58
Speaker 1: to have this property and then give mass to all
38:00
Speaker 1: the other particles. So they came up with like the
38:02
Speaker 1: simplest shape they could for this function that has this property,
38:06
Speaker 1: has a minimum far from zero. You're saying, that's the
38:09
Speaker 1: only way the cluge works. It's the simplest possible cluege.
38:13
Speaker 1: You could have much more elaborate cluges, right, much more
38:16
Speaker 1: complex functions. This is like the simplest function they could
38:19
Speaker 1: think of to make this cluge happen. And you know,
38:21
Speaker 1: theoretical physics is always about like harmony and simplicity, right,
38:24
Speaker 1: because I guess if you came up with the field
38:26
Speaker 1: that was zero at its lowest state, that wouldn't be
38:28
Speaker 1: a solution, right, it would just be zero exactly. Then
38:31
Speaker 1: it would just minimize the zero and nothing would have mass.
38:33
Speaker 1: And for this trick to work, for the Higgs mechanism
38:36
Speaker 1: to work, the Higgs field has to relax to a
38:38
Speaker 1: non zero value. Doesn't work otherwise. So this is sort
38:40
Speaker 1: of the simplest function possible. It doesn't mean that it's
38:43
Speaker 1: the function in nature, right. The Higgs potential in nature
38:46
Speaker 1: is something we're still figuring out by doing experiments the
38:49
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider to really understand the shape of it.
38:51
Speaker 1: Because what happens when you do experiments, is you excite
38:54
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, you pour extra energy into it, and
38:57
Speaker 1: then it wiggles, and when it wiggles, it's making Higgs boson.
39:00
Speaker 1: And so by understanding like how many Higgs bosons you
39:03
Speaker 1: can make, like how much energy does it take to
39:04
Speaker 1: excite the field to two or three Higgs bosons, we
39:07
Speaker 1: can explore the shape of this potential function and understand like,
39:10
Speaker 1: you know, where its edges are and how it moves
39:13
Speaker 1: and stuff. So we're still trying to figure that out
39:14
Speaker 1: and see if the function is actually described by this
39:17
Speaker 1: Mexican potential. Maybe there are other weird wiggles in it
39:21
Speaker 1: we don't even know about. M I see, I guess
39:23
Speaker 1: Another question is is it changing? Has it always sort
39:26
Speaker 1: of looked like this? And then we talked about how
39:28
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the universe it wasn't like that,
39:30
Speaker 1: But is it still changing today? We don't think that
39:32
Speaker 1: it's changing today. We think that it's stable. The universe
39:35
Speaker 1: has sort of like cooled down to a pretty low
39:38
Speaker 1: temperature and sort of like revealed this shape of the potential.
39:42
Speaker 1: You know, you can imagine it's sort of like the
39:44
Speaker 1: ocean emptying and revealing the shape of the bottom. You know,
39:47
Speaker 1: before the ocean empties, things float on the surface, it
39:50
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter where the shape at the bottom is.
39:52
Speaker 1: But as the universe cools, it's sort of like reveals
39:55
Speaker 1: things down at the bottom and everything relaxes down and
39:57
Speaker 1: you know, the shape of the ocean floor is actually important.
40:00
Speaker 1: So we think we're down there at the ocean floor,
40:02
Speaker 1: that we're at this potential. We don't actually know because
40:05
Speaker 1: you know, we know mary a little about the universe,
40:07
Speaker 1: and importantly we don't know sort of like whether there
40:10
Speaker 1: are other wiggles in this potential, like whether there are
40:13
Speaker 1: minima and the potential that sort of go below where
40:16
Speaker 1: we are. The Higgs Boson sort of like got stuck
40:19
Speaker 1: in this one minimum, but there could be other minima
40:22
Speaker 1: out there. I see. It's like there's maybe not just
40:25
Speaker 1: one groove that goes into circle and at the rim
40:28
Speaker 1: with this wine bottle bottom or Mexican hat, But maye
40:31
Speaker 1: there are other wiggles somewhere further out, further out or
40:34
Speaker 1: further in. It could be that when the universe relaxed,
40:37
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson just sort of like fell into this
40:39
Speaker 1: one groove. But as you say, there could be many grooves. Wait,
40:42
Speaker 1: what so maybe it's not a Mexican head, is what
40:45
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, maybe it's not a Mexican hat. Like,
40:47
Speaker 1: we know that there's this like dip far from zero
40:50
Speaker 1: that the Higgs boson is sort of stuck in right now,
40:52
Speaker 1: and we know that it doesn't like to be at zero,
40:54
Speaker 1: but we don't know sort of what's in between. We
40:57
Speaker 1: don't know if, for example, there are other grooves between
41:00
Speaker 1: us and zero or also out past us at higher
41:03
Speaker 1: values of the Higgs field. And it's important because where
41:07
Speaker 1: the Higgs field minimizes determines not just the fact that
41:10
Speaker 1: the particles do have mass, but how much mass they have.
41:13
Speaker 1: Like if the Higgs field minimized at half of its value, boom,
41:16
Speaker 1: all the particles suddenly half their mass. Same thing for
41:19
Speaker 1: if it minimizes it twice its value. So it's really important.
41:23
Speaker 1: Exactly where it's settled completely determines all the dynamics of
41:26
Speaker 1: our universe. It's very sensitive to exactly where the Higgs
41:29
Speaker 1: boson is sitting, right but what is this thing actually dynamic?
41:33
Speaker 1: Like does it have the possibility to like jump to
41:35
Speaker 1: another groove? Like is it wiggling all the time, or
41:37
Speaker 1: is it just like is this mathematical thing just like
41:40
Speaker 1: this fixed thing and that's where we're at. No, it
41:43
Speaker 1: is dynamic, and every time you make a Higgs boson,
41:45
Speaker 1: you are wiggling the Higgs field. Like in an empty universe,
41:49
Speaker 1: the Higgs field would just be there doing nothing. But
41:51
Speaker 1: every time there's energy, every time the collisions, and some
41:53
Speaker 1: of that energy goes into the Higgs field, then it
41:56
Speaker 1: creates wiggles in that field. If you put enough energy
41:59
Speaker 1: into the Higgs field, you could wiggle it so it
42:01
Speaker 1: like gets over a hump and maybe get stuck in
42:04
Speaker 1: a different groove. Wait, what like if as you're colliding particles,
42:08
Speaker 1: maybe you can excite you know, the Higgs field where
42:11
Speaker 1: you're colliding the particles, it could maybe like snap to
42:14
Speaker 1: a different configuration exactly. Imagine like you have a ball
42:18
Speaker 1: and it's sitting in a sombrerow, and now you give
42:20
Speaker 1: that ball energy, it can like get out of that
42:22
Speaker 1: little groove and maybe if there are other grooves, it
42:24
Speaker 1: can then relax into those grooves. So, as you say,
42:27
Speaker 1: you could collide particles and you could excite the Higgs
42:30
Speaker 1: field and you could snap into another configuration locally, just
42:34
Speaker 1: like right where you are, and relax that that value instead.
42:37
Speaker 1: And I've heard that could be catastrophic because then that
42:40
Speaker 1: could propagate and like infect the other bits of space around. Yeah,
42:43
Speaker 1: that would be devastating because the rest of the universe
42:45
Speaker 1: would then also relax to that new value. It would
42:49
Speaker 1: happen sort of at the speed of light, not instantaneously,
42:51
Speaker 1: to propagate out from that point. The Higgs field now
42:54
Speaker 1: collapsing to this new lower value of the field, and
42:58
Speaker 1: that would change the way physics were works completely. But
43:01
Speaker 1: why would it propagate? Like putn't it? You know, if
43:03
Speaker 1: I just change it in one spot, why would it
43:05
Speaker 1: make the other spots change as well? Because the Higgs
43:08
Speaker 1: field is meshed together, you can't have like discontinuities in
43:11
Speaker 1: the field. You know, the equations that describe how the
43:14
Speaker 1: Higgs field oscillates and where relaxes, they're like a wave equation,
43:18
Speaker 1: and so it tells you not just how the Higgs
43:20
Speaker 1: field oscillates at any point, but how different points on
43:23
Speaker 1: the Higgs field talk to each other and they're all
43:25
Speaker 1: linked together. And so that's for example, how energy moves
43:29
Speaker 1: through the Higgs fields. The Higgs boson propagates from one
43:31
Speaker 1: point to another, and so they're definitely connected to each other.
43:35
Speaker 1: And if one collapses and the information propagates through the
43:38
Speaker 1: Higgs field to other points in space. I see, But
43:40
Speaker 1: wouldn't the rest of the field just kind of like
43:43
Speaker 1: stamp down that little bump, you know what I mean? Like,
43:45
Speaker 1: why would that bump survive and spread out? What wouldn't
43:48
Speaker 1: the rest of the field kind of like tend to
43:50
Speaker 1: smooth it out? Yeah, if it jumped into a higher value,
43:53
Speaker 1: if it jumped into a minimum that had a higher
43:55
Speaker 1: value of the Higgs field, You're right, it would be
43:57
Speaker 1: like a spike, and then it would it would get
43:59
Speaker 1: stamped out back down to the value where we are.
44:01
Speaker 1: But what if it jumped into a value that was lower,
44:05
Speaker 1: Like what if between us and zero there's another minimum,
44:08
Speaker 1: like a true minimum. We're sort of like trapped up
44:11
Speaker 1: there on a ledge somewhere, but there's like really a
44:13
Speaker 1: lower spot for the field to relax to. Then if
44:15
Speaker 1: it relaxed to that new value at any point in space,
44:18
Speaker 1: that would spread the whole field would sort of collapse. Wow, right, Yeah,
44:22
Speaker 1: that's what people call the Higgs boson Higgs field collapse.
44:24
Speaker 1: Which could end the universe. And so if we have
44:27
Speaker 1: just a Mexican half potential, that's not an issue because
44:30
Speaker 1: we're in the minimum. It's a true minimum. There's nowhere
44:32
Speaker 1: else to go. But if there are other wiggles in
44:35
Speaker 1: this Mexican half between us and zero, then it's possible
44:39
Speaker 1: that the Higgs fields could collapse, and by creating the
44:42
Speaker 1: Higgs boson in collisions, you could get the Higgs like
44:45
Speaker 1: out of its little trench and into a lower trench
44:47
Speaker 1: and trigger that collapse. Okay, first of all, hey, we
44:51
Speaker 1: don't know what this Mexican had looks like like. They
44:54
Speaker 1: it might have little bumps in in the middle that
44:56
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know about. We don't know exactly.
44:59
Speaker 1: We've only sort of flored the little area in the
45:01
Speaker 1: vicinity of the higgs where it is. We know the
45:03
Speaker 1: value of the minimum, and we've explored sort of rounded
45:06
Speaker 1: by tweaking the Higgs and perturbing it, making the field
45:09
Speaker 1: oscillated in collisions, but we don't know exactly the shape
45:12
Speaker 1: of this potential. And second of all, in the collisions
45:17
Speaker 1: you're doing at the particle collider, that you could could
45:20
Speaker 1: end the universe potentially, and you know this. Is that
45:24
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It's like, yeah, we know that, because
45:27
Speaker 1: that this could happen, But we don't know if it's
45:29
Speaker 1: gonna happen. So but let's cross cross our fingers and
45:32
Speaker 1: hope for the best. My lawyer is whispering my ear
45:35
Speaker 1: over here, Hold on a moment. That's technically true. We're
45:38
Speaker 1: fairly confident that the shape of the potential is simple.
45:41
Speaker 1: Fairly confident that you're not going to destroy the universe.
45:44
Speaker 1: Is that what your lawyer is telling you? Well, I
45:50
Speaker 1: guess the good thing is that if you do destroy
45:52
Speaker 1: the universe, nobody can sue you. I guess that is
45:54
Speaker 1: that your backup plan there? Yeah, eat, you're unsuitable if
45:58
Speaker 1: you destroy the universe. Yeah, exactly. We will pay everybody
46:01
Speaker 1: a million dollars if we destroy the universe. I guarantee,
46:05
Speaker 1: and one currency, everybody gets a million higgs boson joking aside,
46:11
Speaker 1: We do have some ideas for the shape of this potential,
46:14
Speaker 1: because it turns out that the shape of it depends
46:16
Speaker 1: a lot on the mass of the other particles. It
46:19
Speaker 1: comes out of the complex interaction between the Higgs and
46:21
Speaker 1: the top cork, and the Higgs and the w Boson.
46:24
Speaker 1: So we do have some ways to get clues about
46:26
Speaker 1: the shape of this potential, and the information we have
46:29
Speaker 1: so far suggests that it's a very very stable um,
46:33
Speaker 1: that it's been very very difficult, essentially impossible to get
46:36
Speaker 1: the Higgs out of its minimum, that this potential is
46:39
Speaker 1: very very steep. Even if there are other minima, the
46:41
Speaker 1: walls sort of protecting us from those other minima are
46:45
Speaker 1: very tall and very steep. Right, you think fairly confident
46:50
Speaker 1: going to I guess you know, like, you know, there's
46:52
Speaker 1: a one in a million chance that one of my
46:54
Speaker 1: cartoons could end the universe. I'd be like, maybe I
46:57
Speaker 1: should stick to engineering. You know, one in a million?
47:00
Speaker 1: Is that the threshold for you? If it was like
47:02
Speaker 1: one of a billion, you'd still go ahead. That might
47:04
Speaker 1: think about changing career is yeah? But but do you
47:06
Speaker 1: guys are pressing on your like unlikely, but let's hope
47:10
Speaker 1: for the best. Yeah, unlikely, but let's hope for the best.
47:12
Speaker 1: I mean, what else can you do in life? It
47:16
Speaker 1: would be pretty exciting, all right. I feel like you're
47:18
Speaker 1: sticking up your your finger up your nose pretty deep
47:20
Speaker 1: in there, and who knows what's going to happen? That's true.
47:22
Speaker 1: But that's also true every time you do anything at
47:25
Speaker 1: the boundary, you never really know, you know, when we
47:27
Speaker 1: send her over to Mars, we could like irritate the
47:29
Speaker 1: local inhabitants that they could launch an interplanetary attack and
47:32
Speaker 1: wipe us all out, right, But we go to Mars anyway,
47:35
Speaker 1: I think that's even less likely. I think we're fairly
47:37
Speaker 1: confident that Mars won't attack. Well, we're fairly confident to
47:41
Speaker 1: have advance illisations, right that we can see Mars and
47:45
Speaker 1: we've flown around. It could be subterranean, right, they could
47:48
Speaker 1: be laying in weight, in which case they don't have spaceships. Right,
47:53
Speaker 1: So also, it's not going to end the universe. We
47:58
Speaker 1: might get attacked, but it's not gonna end the entire universe,
48:01
Speaker 1: all right, So wiping out humanity and Earth, okay, threatening
48:04
Speaker 1: the entire universe, that's over the line. Get yeah, because
48:08
Speaker 1: you know there could be other you could you be
48:10
Speaker 1: wiping but under underground Martians and who knows how many
48:14
Speaker 1: trillions of life forms in the universe. All right, I'm
48:17
Speaker 1: writing down your concerns here. I will officially take note
48:19
Speaker 1: of them, Thank you, yeah, please please, And when it happens.
48:23
Speaker 1: I'll bring that up and complain about it, and I'll
48:25
Speaker 1: text you first of it happen, run whatnot. You'll be
48:29
Speaker 1: poor because you have to give a million dollars to everybody.
48:32
Speaker 1: But anyways, it seems like existence sort of depends on
48:35
Speaker 1: this Mexican head. I feel like this Mexican had or
48:37
Speaker 1: wine bottle bottom is pretty important. Without it, we wouldn't
48:40
Speaker 1: be here. It is absolutely fundamental, essential to the nature
48:44
Speaker 1: of the universe as we know. It is also very
48:47
Speaker 1: very strange. It's the mathematical oddity, but we know it's real.
48:51
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing that it's been bouncing around
48:52
Speaker 1: in the heads of physicists for five decades wondering like,
48:55
Speaker 1: is this really the thing that our universe has done?
48:58
Speaker 1: Is this the choice of the universe made to get
49:00
Speaker 1: mass to all these particles? And then we found it.
49:02
Speaker 1: We know that it's real, it's actually out there. This
49:04
Speaker 1: is what's really happening. So people have been scratching their
49:07
Speaker 1: heads for ten years since we found it, going like, really, wow,
49:10
Speaker 1: that is weird. I wonder what that means. It's the strangest, weirdest,
49:15
Speaker 1: most important particle we've ever found. And also why we
49:18
Speaker 1: move with the speed that we don't. I don't move
49:20
Speaker 1: with the speed of light because I have mass. And
49:23
Speaker 1: so if you had dreams to one tabe beam yourself
49:26
Speaker 1: to alfice centauri to move there at the speed of light,
49:28
Speaker 1: it's because of the Higgs boson that you can't there.
49:31
Speaker 1: You go back to it being a bummer, a bummer boson.
49:34
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hopefully got you to think a
49:37
Speaker 1: little bit about the makeup of matter and what makes
49:39
Speaker 1: things the way they are and why they are the
49:41
Speaker 1: way they are. Apparently some things are just the way
49:43
Speaker 1: they are, and we're trying to figure out why that is.
49:46
Speaker 1: It's right, and if you're interested in the details of
49:48
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, check out our several other episodes on
49:51
Speaker 1: the topic, including ones about whether there are multiple higgs
49:54
Speaker 1: bosons in the universe. Oh, it's not the higgs boson.
49:58
Speaker 1: So it is a higgs boson. It's the only Higgs
50:01
Speaker 1: boson we've discovered. But there could be other kinds of
50:04
Speaker 1: Higgs boson ascilating out there in the dark. Interesting, but
50:07
Speaker 1: they're not as famous as I guess yet. Maybe once
50:09
Speaker 1: you destroy the universe will come out and be like
50:12
Speaker 1: I told you so, you shouldn't have trusted that Higgs Boson.
50:15
Speaker 1: They are the guy behind the guy that runs everything
50:18
Speaker 1: in the universe. They're the secret shadow government of the
50:21
Speaker 1: secret shadow Government. Interesting the CEO of Disney. Really, you
50:26
Speaker 1: are really tempting our faith there. You're threatening destroy the
50:28
Speaker 1: podcast universe by throwing shade on the biggest corporation out there.
50:32
Speaker 1: I think Bob Iger's are pretty a chill guy. We'll
50:34
Speaker 1: find out at least he's not trying to destroy the universe.
50:38
Speaker 1: It's your threshold now, huh. All right, well, we hope
50:41
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you next time.
50:52
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorghigg Explain
50:55
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of my Heart Radio. For
50:58
Speaker 1: more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
51:01
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
51:05
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H