Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Would the Universe be different with a zero Higgs field?

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Would the Universe be different with a zero Higgs field? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I'll see Daniel and Jorge food truck going,
0:12
Speaker 1: and we expect to see it on a street corner
0:14
Speaker 1: anytime soon. Not yet. We still need a few things.
0:18
Speaker 1: We're missing a menu and a chef. Oh, and a vehicle.
0:22
Speaker 1: I mean our food truck is just missing the food
0:25
Speaker 1: and the truck. Yeah, that's right, because I've been working
0:29
Speaker 1: on the special particle physics twist that we're going to
0:33
Speaker 1: be offering. Ooh, sounds tantalizing. Is it like some kind
0:37
Speaker 1: of interesting flavor fusion or some weird quirky flavors. It's
0:43
Speaker 1: a special device to suck out all of the Higgs
0:47
Speaker 1: bosons from your food so you can eat it without
0:49
Speaker 1: gaining any mass. WHOA, that would be massive. It's not
0:54
Speaker 1: something we take lightly. You should give that some heavy
0:56
Speaker 1: thinking first. Hi am Orhammer, cartoonists and the creator of
1:14
Speaker 1: PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and
1:18
Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I wonder what a
1:21
Speaker 1: bowl of Higgs bosons would taste like. What don't we
1:24
Speaker 1: eat a bowl of Higgs bosons anytime we eat a
1:26
Speaker 1: bowl of anything? Yeah, there are Higgs bosons in everything
1:29
Speaker 1: we eat. But I want a pure dose of higgss,
1:32
Speaker 1: you know what is their inherent flavor. Wouldn't be kind
1:35
Speaker 1: of a heavy meal, though, it would probably make me heavier,
1:37
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Why Ye. Usually eating a bowl of
1:40
Speaker 1: anything will give you a lot of calories, unless it's
1:43
Speaker 1: a bowl of anti matter that'll make you literally lighter. Oh,
1:46
Speaker 1: it would make explode, wouldn't it. A teaspoon of anti
1:49
Speaker 1: matter we make your whole town explode? Yeah, and it
1:52
Speaker 1: would annihilate your appetite. Well, I'm anti exploding your town,
1:55
Speaker 1: so you might want to think about other ways to
2:00
Speaker 1: And I laid your appetite. Is that only because we
2:02
Speaker 1: live in basically the same town exactly? But anyways, Welcome
2:05
Speaker 1: to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
2:07
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in which we enjoy the flavor of
2:11
Speaker 1: the universe, both the main course of everything that science
2:14
Speaker 1: has unraveled about the way the universe works and our
2:18
Speaker 1: mysterious cosmos operates, as well as the spicy side dish
2:22
Speaker 1: of confusion of everything that we don't yet understand about
2:26
Speaker 1: the universe. It's a delicious place to live and to
2:29
Speaker 1: be curious and just to wonder. About how everything works.
2:32
Speaker 1: It's right. We serve up bowls folds of amazing signs
2:36
Speaker 1: here talking about the universe and the cosmos and everything,
2:38
Speaker 1: and it ready for you to scoop up and feed
2:41
Speaker 1: your mind and your soul with amazing knowledge about everything
2:45
Speaker 1: that is. And as we chew on that everything we
2:48
Speaker 1: understand and don't about the universe, you might wonder, why
2:51
Speaker 1: does the universe taste this way and not some other way.
2:54
Speaker 1: Is it possible for the universe to have been different
2:57
Speaker 1: if we ran the whole experiment again from the Big Bang,
3:00
Speaker 1: would we end up with basically the same thing, or
3:03
Speaker 1: where there's some random twists and turns that determined the
3:06
Speaker 1: fate of our universe? And might have said it on
3:08
Speaker 1: another course, Yeah, it is a very peculiar universe, pretty interesting,
3:13
Speaker 1: and especially because of the fact that we're in it,
3:15
Speaker 1: we had a lot of spice to the universe, I think,
3:18
Speaker 1: and so you got to wonder if the universe was
3:21
Speaker 1: any different, would we still be here. It's a deep
3:23
Speaker 1: question of philosophy and one that's inspired by specific discoveries
3:28
Speaker 1: we've made about particle physics. As we look out at
3:31
Speaker 1: the universe and pull it apart and try to understand
3:33
Speaker 1: what it's little bits are and how they work. We
3:36
Speaker 1: notice a lot of sort of specific details about how
3:39
Speaker 1: things work. Particles have these specific masses, They follow all
3:42
Speaker 1: these very specific rules, and we don't always understand why
3:46
Speaker 1: they follow those rules or have those particular values or interactions,
3:50
Speaker 1: and whether those things are arbitrary or if they have
3:53
Speaker 1: to be that way. Yeah, if it seems like the
3:55
Speaker 1: universe is the way it is because of some random reason,
3:58
Speaker 1: I guess you got to wonder, like, what if it
4:00
Speaker 1: was different? What if the universe looked and felt and
4:05
Speaker 1: worked in a slightly different way? Would there still be
4:08
Speaker 1: food trucks? There will always be food trucks. I think
4:12
Speaker 1: their inevitability of evolution, well, they only became hipp and
4:16
Speaker 1: popular maybe like ten years ago. I don't know. I
4:18
Speaker 1: don't go out often enough to know what's hip and
4:20
Speaker 1: popular on the streets. But I think it's an extension
4:22
Speaker 1: of a question everybody asks themselves. I mean, we know
4:25
Speaker 1: that the probability of you in particular being here is tiny,
4:29
Speaker 1: just for like the chances of your parents having met
4:32
Speaker 1: and coming together at just the moment for you to
4:35
Speaker 1: be born is astronomical. On top of that the probability
4:39
Speaker 1: for humans to have evolved and for Earth to have formed,
4:43
Speaker 1: and for our galaxy to be right here. On top
4:45
Speaker 1: of all of that stuff is an even deeper layer
4:49
Speaker 1: of questioning about reality, about whether the very rules of
4:52
Speaker 1: the universe have to be this way and whether they
4:55
Speaker 1: could be another way. Add that to the probabilities for
4:58
Speaker 1: you to exist, and the whole thing its dwarfs you.
5:00
Speaker 1: It makes you feel like you are so unlikely. It's
5:03
Speaker 1: amazing that you're here. It is amazing that we're here.
5:06
Speaker 1: Although I do try to think about the moment of
5:09
Speaker 1: my conception the least amount possible. That's something I'd like
5:12
Speaker 1: to put a lot of thought in. But it is
5:14
Speaker 1: interesting to think about the conception of the universe and
5:17
Speaker 1: how it came to be and what made it the
5:19
Speaker 1: way it is right now. Yeah, and something we know
5:21
Speaker 1: very little about. We've discovered all these rules that particles follow,
5:25
Speaker 1: but we don't know if those values are set randomly,
5:28
Speaker 1: as you suggested, or if there's some deeper set of
5:30
Speaker 1: rules that requires them to have these values. It's just
5:33
Speaker 1: the only universe we've ever studied, and so we don't
5:36
Speaker 1: have other examples to inform us and so to the
5:40
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question would the
5:47
Speaker 1: universe be different with a zero Higgs feel I would
5:51
Speaker 1: certainly be involved in fewer Nobel Prize winning discoveries. Wait
5:54
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Well, just in the sense that
5:56
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be here if the Higgs field was zero.
6:00
Speaker 1: I see, that's right. Yeah, the discovery of the or
6:04
Speaker 1: I guess, the confirmation of the Higgs field, and the
6:06
Speaker 1: discovery the Higgs boson that won a Nobel Prize, and
6:09
Speaker 1: you were sort of involved in that project, right, I
6:11
Speaker 1: was involved in the project from the experimental side, like
6:14
Speaker 1: we demonstrated the Higgs field is there, and we produced
6:17
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson and saw it and studied it. We
6:19
Speaker 1: of course didn't win the Nobel Prize for that. Our
6:22
Speaker 1: discovery confirmed the theoretical ideas, and those theorists all won
6:27
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for it. Though there was a lot
6:28
Speaker 1: of really interesting sort of political jockeying for the Nobel Prize.
6:33
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if everybody out there appreciates sort of
6:35
Speaker 1: like how personal and political the process of choosing people
6:38
Speaker 1: for the Nobel Prize is. There's some really interesting stories there.
6:42
Speaker 1: I think we all appreciate some gossip bill the beans
6:46
Speaker 1: who backstaff who with the Nobel Prize in the living room. Well,
6:49
Speaker 1: the issue is that they can give the Nobel Prize
6:51
Speaker 1: to up to three people. That's of course the rule
6:54
Speaker 1: from Nobel's will, and so everybody knew Higgs was going
6:57
Speaker 1: to be on the list, but the question was who
7:00
Speaker 1: else got a share of the Nobel Prize? And there
7:03
Speaker 1: were two other folks that were sort of high in
7:05
Speaker 1: the running, but then one of them passed away before
7:08
Speaker 1: we actually discovered the Higgs field suspiciously that it so
7:14
Speaker 1: sucks this is not a true crime podcast. Or maybe
7:17
Speaker 1: it could be. What were the circumstances of this person's
7:20
Speaker 1: to mice. We're not going to dig into that, but
7:23
Speaker 1: it did leave an opening because you cannot win the
7:25
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize posthumously. If you pass away, you can't win it.
7:29
Speaker 1: So there was a third slot there, and it wasn't
7:32
Speaker 1: clear who should get that third slot. So all of
7:35
Speaker 1: a sudden, all the theorists who had been involved in
7:37
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson theoretical frameworks started giving a bunch of
7:41
Speaker 1: seminars about their role in these pivotal developments, essentially campaigning
7:45
Speaker 1: for that third spot. Oh, I thought you were going
7:47
Speaker 1: to say that all the scientists involved in the Higgs
7:49
Speaker 1: discovery suddenly started to mysteriously disappear and pass away. No,
7:56
Speaker 1: this is not a true crime podcast. It's also not
7:58
Speaker 1: a paranormal activities podcas cast. They didn't all like disappear
8:01
Speaker 1: into ghosts or anything like that. But you know, when
8:03
Speaker 1: everybody realized, oh, this sort of a third slot available
8:06
Speaker 1: for who's going to share the Nobel Prize for the
8:08
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, a lot of people started to publicly make
8:11
Speaker 1: the case that they should get that third share. Wow,
8:15
Speaker 1: Like like they put out ad saying, like, for your
8:17
Speaker 1: consideration for best supporting scientists in a Higgs field discovery.
8:23
Speaker 1: It's exactly the particle physics version of that. People started
8:26
Speaker 1: putting paper ons in the archive, you know, a historical
8:28
Speaker 1: retrospective on the discovery of the Higgs boson, highlighting their
8:32
Speaker 1: role in it, for example, giving a lot of public
8:35
Speaker 1: talks about this kind of stuff, you know, sort of
8:37
Speaker 1: wink wink, not not remember I'm very important because in
8:40
Speaker 1: the end, the Nobel Prize is decided by people, for
8:43
Speaker 1: people about people. It's political like everything else. Yeah, but
8:46
Speaker 1: I bet if the scientists suddenly started disappearing or dying
8:50
Speaker 1: under mysterious syncretest and fewer people would put their names
8:53
Speaker 1: out there. I don't know, maybe it would make it
8:57
Speaker 1: even more mysterious and attractive to people. Well, there's not
9:01
Speaker 1: a true crime podcast, is a true science podcast. But
9:04
Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting to think about the Higgs
9:07
Speaker 1: Boson discovery and how significant it was. Right because discovering
9:10
Speaker 1: the Higgs field sort of confirm the last bit of
9:13
Speaker 1: the standard model, which is the part that gives things mass.
9:17
Speaker 1: It's really an incredible punctuation mark on a centuries long story.
9:21
Speaker 1: You know, when Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism, it was
9:24
Speaker 1: an incredible moment in theoretical physics because it took two
9:27
Speaker 1: pieces of mathematics and recognized it like both of them
9:31
Speaker 1: were incomplete, but in complementary ways. It's like he saw
9:34
Speaker 1: two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and realized that one's
9:36
Speaker 1: fit perfectly inside the other. That was beautiful. But then
9:40
Speaker 1: Higgs a hundred years later realized that this new joint
9:44
Speaker 1: piece electricity magnetism fit perfectly with the weak force in
9:48
Speaker 1: exactly the same way, except there was one piece missing,
9:51
Speaker 1: so he was able to join these things together and
9:53
Speaker 1: recognize like the outline of a new missing piece, which
9:57
Speaker 1: of course is the Higgs field, which we then discovered.
10:00
Speaker 1: So it's a really an incredible story of how like
10:02
Speaker 1: mathematics has shown us the path to insight into the
10:05
Speaker 1: very nature of the universe. Yeah, no, for sure. I
10:08
Speaker 1: mean where would physics be without mass? I mean you
10:10
Speaker 1: kind of owe everything to that, right, and also engineers
10:14
Speaker 1: to make your experiments. Yeah, and cooks and plumbers and
10:18
Speaker 1: everything else, and food trucks. We stand on the shoulders
10:21
Speaker 1: of basically everybody. Yeah, it is an amazing discovery and
10:23
Speaker 1: the end of a long road of exploring what the
10:26
Speaker 1: universe is made out of. But like you said, it's
10:28
Speaker 1: so significant this Higgs field because it sort of gives
10:31
Speaker 1: things mass, or at least that's the common perception of it.
10:33
Speaker 1: That it kind of makes you wonder, like what would
10:35
Speaker 1: happen if there was no Higgs field, or the Higgs
10:37
Speaker 1: field was zero. Yeah, because the Higgs field is different
10:41
Speaker 1: from every other field we have found. You, the electron field,
10:45
Speaker 1: the photon field, the cork fields, all these are fields
10:48
Speaker 1: that fill space. They can like wiggle in ways that
10:51
Speaker 1: we see as particles. But the Higgs field is different
10:54
Speaker 1: from all of those fields because it has so much
10:56
Speaker 1: more energy, sort of like stuck inside of it instead
10:59
Speaker 1: of relaxing down zero like everything else did when the
11:01
Speaker 1: universe cooled. It's sort of like got stuck on a shelf,
11:04
Speaker 1: and that really changes the very nature of our universe.
11:08
Speaker 1: M Yeah, Well, in this podcast, we'd like to ask
11:10
Speaker 1: a lot of what if questions, right, Daniel, I think
11:13
Speaker 1: we've had episodes about like what if the Earth's gravity
11:17
Speaker 1: suddenly turned off? Or what if we didn't have electrons? Right?
11:21
Speaker 1: Big questions about how the universe might or could be different. Yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: These are fundamental games, not only because it lets us
11:28
Speaker 1: think about other universes and what they might be like,
11:30
Speaker 1: but because it helps us understand the role of everything,
11:33
Speaker 1: how they all come together to make the symphony of
11:36
Speaker 1: our reality. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can ask, like,
11:38
Speaker 1: what would life be like without food trucks? And that
11:41
Speaker 1: kind of tells you a little bit more about how
11:44
Speaker 1: significant Yeah, if you can even call that living? What's
11:47
Speaker 1: life without tacos? That say? Yet? Right? Probably healthier actually
11:51
Speaker 1: longer and healthier? Well do they were asking the question
11:53
Speaker 1: of whether the universe would be different and how it
11:56
Speaker 1: would it be different if the Higgs field were zero,
11:58
Speaker 1: if that big discovery had never occurred, or even go
12:02
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the universe, what if the
12:04
Speaker 1: universe started without a Higgs field? And so, as usual,
12:07
Speaker 1: we were wondering how many people out there had thought
12:09
Speaker 1: about this question and wonder what Higgs list life would
12:13
Speaker 1: be like. So thanks very much to everybody who volunteered
12:16
Speaker 1: for this segment of the podcast. We really enjoy hearing
12:19
Speaker 1: your thoughts, and we'd like to hear your thoughts. In particular,
12:22
Speaker 1: we're talking to you, a listener who has never volunteered.
12:25
Speaker 1: Please don't be shy right to us two questions at
12:28
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it for
12:30
Speaker 1: a second. What do you think would happen if the
12:32
Speaker 1: universe's Higgs field was zero? It's what people had to say.
12:38
Speaker 1: So I only know about the Higgs field through your show,
12:41
Speaker 1: and I only think I heard it once or twice,
12:43
Speaker 1: so I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing it's some
12:46
Speaker 1: kind of energy, and if it was zero, I'm guessing
12:49
Speaker 1: the universe would be nothing. If the Higgs field was zero,
12:53
Speaker 1: then I guess we will be all as soup of energy. Well,
12:58
Speaker 1: I do know that the Higgs field is responsible for
13:01
Speaker 1: giving particles mass, and without it, then particles in the
13:06
Speaker 1: universe would not feel the effects of gravity if they
13:11
Speaker 1: didn't have mass, and without the effects of gravity, things
13:15
Speaker 1: wouldn't clump together. So you know, we wouldn't have stars,
13:19
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have galaxies. I guess after the Big Bang
13:22
Speaker 1: it would be just the soup. I think this has
13:25
Speaker 1: something to do with false vacuum and the destruction of
13:27
Speaker 1: the universe. Given that the Higgs boson is responsible for
13:31
Speaker 1: giving particles mass, my assumption is that if the Higgs
13:34
Speaker 1: field was zero, then it would be not possible for
13:37
Speaker 1: particles to have mass, and therefore gravitational effects would not
13:42
Speaker 1: work in a universe where Higgs field is zero. Well,
13:45
Speaker 1: if I understand it right, the Higgs field transfers mass
13:50
Speaker 1: to particles, So if it didn't do that, the particles
13:55
Speaker 1: would have no mass, which means they wouldn't attract each
13:58
Speaker 1: other and it would just be fly around the speed
14:00
Speaker 1: of light. So I guess the universe would just be
14:03
Speaker 1: like a big mist. I mean, there would be no clumping,
14:06
Speaker 1: there would be no aggregation. Everything would just be like
14:11
Speaker 1: flying around and would just be like a big fog,
14:14
Speaker 1: or even not just nothing because there's no mass, there's
14:19
Speaker 1: no attraction. So I think if the Higgs field were zero,
14:25
Speaker 1: the universe would either look incredibly boring and nothing could
14:30
Speaker 1: or would happen, or the opposite, that the universe would
14:35
Speaker 1: become incredibly chaotic and out of control very quickly, rather
14:39
Speaker 1: like a maths class on these substitute maths teachers first day.
14:44
Speaker 1: I guess the Higgs field is that thing that gives
14:48
Speaker 1: stuff mass, So if there is no way to have mass,
14:54
Speaker 1: there would be essentially no gravity. I guess things would
14:59
Speaker 1: probably be very smooth then, not clumped together as much.
15:03
Speaker 1: All right, not a lot of happy answers here. Nobody
15:05
Speaker 1: wants to live in that universe. It sounds like I'm
15:07
Speaker 1: just disappointed. Nobody said that without the Higgs field you
15:09
Speaker 1: couldn't get Higgie with it. Would we even have will
15:15
Speaker 1: Smith without the Higgs field? Right, that's the big question.
15:20
Speaker 1: It'd be like a slap in the face to the
15:22
Speaker 1: universe too soon. All right, he's the fresh prince of
15:25
Speaker 1: particle physics after all. Well, this is an interesting question.
15:28
Speaker 1: What would the universe be like or would the universe
15:30
Speaker 1: be different if the Higgs field were zero. So let's
15:34
Speaker 1: dig into this question, Daniel. We talked a little bit
15:36
Speaker 1: about the Higgs boson and the discovery, but how do
15:38
Speaker 1: physicists define the Higgs field? How can we understand what
15:41
Speaker 1: it is? Our modern concept of like what space is
15:45
Speaker 1: from a quantum mechanical perspective, involves basically a bunch of
15:48
Speaker 1: quantum fields. So imagine empty space out there. It's never
15:52
Speaker 1: really empty when a particle moves through that space. It's
15:55
Speaker 1: really just like a ripple in some quantum field. And
15:59
Speaker 1: these quantum fields fill the whole universe. There's one for
16:02
Speaker 1: every kind of particle that's out there. The deepest question
16:05
Speaker 1: is like why do we have these fields? Why do
16:07
Speaker 1: they exist? How many different kind of fields are there?
16:09
Speaker 1: And the answer is we just don't know. We've observed
16:12
Speaker 1: these fields, we've found them. We've been able to describe
16:14
Speaker 1: them mathematically using wave equations, so we think they wiggle
16:18
Speaker 1: the same way that like water in your bathtub wiggles,
16:21
Speaker 1: or in a similar way at least, And so the
16:23
Speaker 1: name of the game is like hunting out these fields.
16:25
Speaker 1: How many fields are there? And the Higgs field is
16:27
Speaker 1: just one of those fields. That's out there, but it's
16:30
Speaker 1: also quite different from the other fields. You know, particles
16:34
Speaker 1: which are excitations of the Higgs field don't have any spin,
16:37
Speaker 1: which makes them very different from every other kind of
16:39
Speaker 1: particle we have seen. Electrons and photons, they all have
16:42
Speaker 1: some kind of spin. Higgs bosons don't have any spin.
16:46
Speaker 1: But just to maybe clarify for people, you say, there
16:48
Speaker 1: are other fields, and basically, like we're wiggles and fields, right, Like,
16:52
Speaker 1: every particle out there, including the ones that we're made
16:55
Speaker 1: out of, are there because there are fields for it, right, Like,
16:59
Speaker 1: there's an electric field that perme it's the entire universe,
17:02
Speaker 1: and that's where electrons come from. But it's also the
17:04
Speaker 1: same for like quarks, right quarks with makeup protons and neutrinos.
17:09
Speaker 1: Everything has a field. Basically, that's right, Exactly, every particle
17:12
Speaker 1: is just a ripple in this field, and that sort
17:14
Speaker 1: of like unifies all the particles. Like you might think
17:17
Speaker 1: about one electron and another electron that's totally separate particles,
17:20
Speaker 1: you can also think of them as two different ripples
17:23
Speaker 1: in the same field. There's one electron field that fills
17:27
Speaker 1: the whole universe and the whole concept of a field
17:30
Speaker 1: might sound sort of weird and abstract and hard to
17:32
Speaker 1: get your head around, but it's really just like a
17:34
Speaker 1: number for every point in space. Everywhere in space you
17:37
Speaker 1: can have a number, and maybe that number is zero
17:40
Speaker 1: or maybe that number is ten. Right in this case,
17:42
Speaker 1: it's like the value of the field, and as you
17:44
Speaker 1: put energy into that field, it can oscillate and wiggle
17:47
Speaker 1: in a way that looks like a particle. Also, all
17:49
Speaker 1: of space is like embedded with all of these quantum fields. Again,
17:52
Speaker 1: we don't know why. This is just our description of
17:55
Speaker 1: the universe we have observed, and the Higgs field is
17:57
Speaker 1: different from all of those fields because it interacts with
18:00
Speaker 1: those fields in a special way. It connects with them
18:03
Speaker 1: and changes how particles move through the other fields in
18:07
Speaker 1: just the way so as to make those fields look
18:09
Speaker 1: like they have mass. So the electron flies through the universe,
18:13
Speaker 1: but it also interacts with the Higgs field, and that
18:15
Speaker 1: changes how the electron particle moves through its field in
18:20
Speaker 1: just the same way as if the electron itself had mass.
18:23
Speaker 1: So the Higgs field sort of changes what we think
18:25
Speaker 1: mass is instead of like the amount of stuff and
18:28
Speaker 1: a little particle that we think of. It it's like
18:31
Speaker 1: how strongly the Higgs field changes how those ripples move
18:34
Speaker 1: through other fields. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think. Sometimes
18:37
Speaker 1: I sit down and I, you know, can imagine my
18:40
Speaker 1: body and all the atoms that my hands and my
18:42
Speaker 1: arms and my legs are made out of. Pretty amazing
18:44
Speaker 1: to imagine each one of those atoms as being, you know,
18:47
Speaker 1: a collection of electrons. Each of those electrons it's just
18:50
Speaker 1: being like little ripples, like little wiggles in some sort
18:53
Speaker 1: of universe field. It's pretty tribute to think about. Yeah,
18:56
Speaker 1: and it connects you with all the other electrons in
18:59
Speaker 1: the universe, right, you know, like why are all electrons
19:02
Speaker 1: the same really? Because they're all just ripples in the
19:04
Speaker 1: same field. It's like we're all sharing one huge blanket,
19:08
Speaker 1: you know, instead of having our own little blankets. Yeah,
19:11
Speaker 1: we're all connected, man. But then you're saying, the Higgs
19:15
Speaker 1: field is another field that is all around this, but
19:17
Speaker 1: it doesn't make up matter, does it, Like it Like,
19:20
Speaker 1: there's no stuff mean out of Higgs bosons. So a
19:22
Speaker 1: lot of the fields create particles that are stable, like
19:25
Speaker 1: the electron field. You can have stuff that just sits there,
19:27
Speaker 1: and the electron can sit there for an infinite amount
19:29
Speaker 1: of time and just exist. The Higgs field can also
19:32
Speaker 1: create particles, So the Higgs boson is what happens when
19:35
Speaker 1: you excite the Higgs field and you get a particle,
19:37
Speaker 1: but that particle isn't stable, Like, if you have a
19:39
Speaker 1: Higgs boson sitting in empty space, it will very quickly
19:42
Speaker 1: turn into other particles. So there's no stable matter made
19:46
Speaker 1: out of Higgs bosons. So yeah, you can't like build
19:49
Speaker 1: stuff out of Higgs bosons because it'll just fall apart. Okay,
19:53
Speaker 1: So then the Higgs field is there, and you're saying
19:55
Speaker 1: that it's sort of main effect is that it gives
19:59
Speaker 1: other particles from other fields the feeling of mass, right,
20:03
Speaker 1: or behavior that feels like mass, and specifically the idea
20:08
Speaker 1: of mass as it relates to movement. Right, Yeah, we're
20:11
Speaker 1: talking about inertial mass here. We're talking about how much
20:14
Speaker 1: force it takes to get something to accelerate. Right, force
20:18
Speaker 1: equals mass times acceleration. What that mass term really means.
20:21
Speaker 1: It tells you how to relate the force and the acceleration.
20:25
Speaker 1: How much of a force do you need in order
20:27
Speaker 1: to get something to accelerate if you're pushing on the Earth,
20:29
Speaker 1: it has a huge mass. It takes a really big force.
20:32
Speaker 1: If you're pushing on a leaf as a tiny mass,
20:35
Speaker 1: so a little force can give you a pretty good acceleration.
20:39
Speaker 1: So that's the mass we're talking about. And where does
20:41
Speaker 1: that mass come from, We don't really know. It's sort
20:44
Speaker 1: of like a measure of how much energy is stored
20:46
Speaker 1: inside something. So particles kind of energy stored inside of
20:49
Speaker 1: them because they interact with the Higgs field. Like the
20:51
Speaker 1: electron is truly at its core a massless particle, but
20:55
Speaker 1: it interacts with the Higgs field and that gives it
20:57
Speaker 1: this like internal stored energy, which gives it inertia. And
21:01
Speaker 1: that's what we call mass. That's what we call mass
21:04
Speaker 1: due to the Higgs field, Right, And so like the
21:07
Speaker 1: Earth is really massive and if I try to push
21:10
Speaker 1: in it, it'd be really hard to get it to move.
21:12
Speaker 1: And so that's an effect of the Higgs field. It's
21:15
Speaker 1: like it's trying to push the Earth, but the Higgs
21:17
Speaker 1: field is saying like, no, this thing has a lot
21:20
Speaker 1: of mass. I'm not going to let it move a lot. Yeah,
21:22
Speaker 1: that's right, but remember, as you just pointed out, the
21:24
Speaker 1: Higgs field is one way things can get mass. Mass
21:27
Speaker 1: is really just a measure of internal stored energy. So
21:30
Speaker 1: if you take for example, a proton, the particles that
21:32
Speaker 1: make it up, the quarks, they do have some mass
21:35
Speaker 1: from the Higgs field, but most of the mass of
21:37
Speaker 1: the proton is from its other internal stored energy, from
21:41
Speaker 1: the bonds between those quarks, which come from the gluons.
21:44
Speaker 1: So most of the mass the proton and the neutron
21:46
Speaker 1: and therefore you and me and the Earth doesn't actually
21:49
Speaker 1: come from the Higgs field. It comes from the internal
21:52
Speaker 1: stored energy and protons and neutrons. It comes from the
21:54
Speaker 1: strong force. So there's lots of different ways to get
21:57
Speaker 1: internal stored energy, and the Higgs field is one of them.
22:00
Speaker 1: M So, wait, So, like a proton has a lot
22:02
Speaker 1: of mass because of the energy that binds the quarks
22:06
Speaker 1: in it, and that is somehow what makes it hard
22:09
Speaker 1: to move through the universe. Is there a mechanism for that?
22:12
Speaker 1: That's not something we understand very well. Like why do
22:15
Speaker 1: things have inertia when they have energy inside of them?
22:17
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of weird to think about. Like
22:19
Speaker 1: you take a box that has no mass and you
22:21
Speaker 1: put photons inside of it, and those photons have no mass,
22:24
Speaker 1: But now that you've stored those photons inside the box,
22:27
Speaker 1: the box now has mass because you have internal stored energy.
22:31
Speaker 1: So you can put massless stuff inside a massless box
22:34
Speaker 1: and get a massive box. Mass is a really weird thing.
22:38
Speaker 1: It's this property a stored energy that it has inertia,
22:42
Speaker 1: and the stored inertia kind of mask doesn't have anything
22:45
Speaker 1: to do with the Higgs field, is what you're saying.
22:47
Speaker 1: The Higgs field only kind of affects the mass of
22:50
Speaker 1: individual particles. Yeah, it's one way you can store energy
22:55
Speaker 1: inside a particle, Like electron has internal stored energy due
22:58
Speaker 1: to its interactions with the Higgs field. It's like using
23:01
Speaker 1: the energy of the Higgs field and capturing a little
23:04
Speaker 1: bit of that energy, and that's what gives it some inertia.
23:07
Speaker 1: But yeah, most of the sort of internal stored energy
23:09
Speaker 1: of a proton and neutron doesn't come from the Higgs field.
23:13
Speaker 1: So like if I have a proton which has quarks
23:15
Speaker 1: in it, most of the mass of a proton is
23:18
Speaker 1: not due to the Higgs field then, like only a
23:20
Speaker 1: very little amount of it. So I guess that makes
23:22
Speaker 1: you wonder if the Higgs field or zero, would it
23:24
Speaker 1: even matter. Would it change really the mass of a
23:28
Speaker 1: proton and everything how everything else works in the universe.
23:31
Speaker 1: Let's get into that question what does it mean for
23:33
Speaker 1: the universe and for food trucks everywhere? But first let's
23:37
Speaker 1: take a quick break or I we're playing what if,
23:52
Speaker 1: which is a pretty popular genre. I feel like right now,
23:56
Speaker 1: have you seen that what If show on Disney Plus?
24:00
Speaker 1: In some of that show? And I've read Random Rose too,
24:03
Speaker 1: excellent what if books, So there's a lot of fun
24:05
Speaker 1: what if out there. Yeah, so we're asking what if
24:08
Speaker 1: the Higgs field were zero? What if we instead of
24:11
Speaker 1: a universe where the Higgs field wasn't zero, we lived
24:13
Speaker 1: in a universe where the Higgs field was zero zero
24:17
Speaker 1: or like gone altogether. And we're talking about if it
24:20
Speaker 1: were zero rather than if it were gone altogether. Is
24:23
Speaker 1: you know one thing the other fields can do is
24:25
Speaker 1: they can relax down to basically almost zero, Like you
24:28
Speaker 1: can have space but basically no electrons in it. Right.
24:31
Speaker 1: That means the electron field is going down to its
24:33
Speaker 1: minimum value. Of course, it's a quantum field, so it's
24:36
Speaker 1: always going to have some energy stored in it. Maybe
24:39
Speaker 1: you can break that down for us a little bit
24:40
Speaker 1: like what does it mean for a field to be
24:43
Speaker 1: zero or not zero or to have energy in it?
24:45
Speaker 1: Like it's a fields, it's something that's not substantial, is it?
24:48
Speaker 1: Is it field? Something substantial? Is sort of a big
24:50
Speaker 1: question in philosophy, like our field's even real or are
24:53
Speaker 1: they just sort of a calculation we do in our
24:55
Speaker 1: heads to try to make predictions from experiments we don't know,
24:59
Speaker 1: And that could be a whole our little digression. But
25:01
Speaker 1: the way the fields work mathematically is that you just
25:03
Speaker 1: sort of think of them as a number or in
25:06
Speaker 1: some cases a vector at every point in space, and
25:10
Speaker 1: that field can have energy, which means that that number
25:12
Speaker 1: can be moving. So fields can have like kinetic energy
25:15
Speaker 1: if they wiggle, like the value of the field is
25:17
Speaker 1: going up and down. They can also have potential energy
25:20
Speaker 1: based on the different kind of field that it is,
25:22
Speaker 1: and so the points in space can sort of be oscillating,
25:25
Speaker 1: like the value of the field can be changing, and
25:28
Speaker 1: wiggles in the field like that are sort of coherent.
25:31
Speaker 1: Because of the way the field works, it follows the
25:34
Speaker 1: wave equation that energy sort of propagates through the field
25:36
Speaker 1: in a coherent way, which is why like a little
25:39
Speaker 1: packet of energy can move through the field and sort
25:41
Speaker 1: of stay together. An electron can move across the universe
25:45
Speaker 1: carrying that packet of energy and not like dissipating out
25:48
Speaker 1: into the universe. So like if you say like a
25:51
Speaker 1: field has energy, means it has kind of like a
25:54
Speaker 1: wiggle to it, like it's pulsating in a way, like
25:56
Speaker 1: it's not standing still. Yeah, exactly, its pulsating. And because
25:59
Speaker 1: these are quantum fields, they have to wiggle in very
26:02
Speaker 1: discrete ways. Like you can have one electron or two
26:05
Speaker 1: electrons or seven electrons. You can't have one point seven
26:08
Speaker 1: one electrons, right, because it's a quantum field, which means
26:12
Speaker 1: it's quantized, which means it has like a ladder of
26:14
Speaker 1: possible states, not an infinite spectrum. The same way you
26:18
Speaker 1: can have like one photon or seven photons, but you
26:21
Speaker 1: can't have one and a half photon. That's because the
26:23
Speaker 1: field knows how to wiggle in some ways, the same
26:26
Speaker 1: way of like a guitar string. You know, it can
26:28
Speaker 1: wiggle at some notes. It can't wiggle at arbitrary notes
26:31
Speaker 1: because of how you cut off the ends of it. Well,
26:34
Speaker 1: you haven't seen me play a guitar. I can make
26:36
Speaker 1: all kinds of horrible sounds and a guitar. I keep
26:39
Speaker 1: waiting for the first public show of your dad band.
26:41
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the grateful dads, shout out to my bandmates again. So,
26:45
Speaker 1: if the fields can have energy to them, and you're
26:48
Speaker 1: saying that the Higgs field has some energy to it,
26:51
Speaker 1: whereas all the other fields have zero energy, like the
26:54
Speaker 1: electron field, does it have some energy to it? The
26:56
Speaker 1: electron field and all the other fields have relaxed it
26:59
Speaker 1: down to very low values, essentially down to zero. Remember,
27:02
Speaker 1: the history of the universe is one where we are
27:05
Speaker 1: cooling down. We started out very hot and dense. It
27:08
Speaker 1: was like the center of the sun, lots of energy,
27:10
Speaker 1: and all the fields they're all frothing around to the
27:12
Speaker 1: point where you can't even really think about particles, more
27:15
Speaker 1: like an ocean rather than droplets of water. But as
27:17
Speaker 1: the universe expands, then the energy decreases, it gets diluted
27:21
Speaker 1: and things cool down, and now we're in a sort
27:23
Speaker 1: of very old, very cold phase of the universe where
27:27
Speaker 1: the fields are mostly zero everywhere. So everything sort of
27:31
Speaker 1: like relaxed down to about zero. But the Higgs field didn't.
27:34
Speaker 1: When the universe was cooling down, the Higgs field got
27:37
Speaker 1: stuck in sort of like a local minimum. You know,
27:39
Speaker 1: things tend to like to flow down to low potential
27:42
Speaker 1: energy the way like water will flow down to the
27:45
Speaker 1: bottom of a valley. But if you have a little
27:47
Speaker 1: lip there there's like a little divot in the rock,
27:50
Speaker 1: the water will get trapped in that little divot. And
27:52
Speaker 1: that's how you get like, you know, lakes at ten
27:54
Speaker 1: thousand feet up in the mountains because the little valley
27:57
Speaker 1: there that traps it. The Higgs field when it was relaxing,
28:00
Speaker 1: got stuck in one of those little valleys and it's
28:02
Speaker 1: still there. Well, I guess maybe my question is, like
28:05
Speaker 1: when these fields relax at the beginning of the universe,
28:09
Speaker 1: like where did that energy go? Like is it because
28:11
Speaker 1: the universe expanded and things got spread out or did
28:14
Speaker 1: that energy like go into making electrons or matter? What
28:18
Speaker 1: causes a field to like lose its energy. So it's
28:20
Speaker 1: just because the universe is expanding and so things are
28:22
Speaker 1: getting more dilute, So the energy just gets more spread out.
28:26
Speaker 1: So instead of having a lot of energy in a
28:28
Speaker 1: small amount of space, now you have the same energy
28:31
Speaker 1: and more space, and so things are just colder and
28:34
Speaker 1: more spread out and matter gets diluted. As space increases
28:38
Speaker 1: by like one over distance cubed or have same amount
28:41
Speaker 1: of energy in the matter and now more volume radiation
28:45
Speaker 1: things like photons gets deluded even more because it's not
28:49
Speaker 1: just that space gets bigger you have like more volume
28:52
Speaker 1: with the same amount of energy, but the actual photons
28:54
Speaker 1: themselves get red shifted, so they cool down even faster
28:58
Speaker 1: than the matter. So as the time goes on from
29:00
Speaker 1: the universe, you have like a radiation dominated portion in
29:03
Speaker 1: the very early universe, and then that radiation falls off
29:06
Speaker 1: very quickly and then the matter cools down. Now we're
29:09
Speaker 1: actually at a time in the universe where we're dark
29:11
Speaker 1: energy dominated, where most of the energy in the universe
29:14
Speaker 1: is not in radiation or in matter, and that's just
29:17
Speaker 1: because of the expansion of the universe. So when the
29:20
Speaker 1: universe stretched out, all these fields kind of relax or
29:23
Speaker 1: they got stretched I guess they got kind of stretched out,
29:25
Speaker 1: kind of like you would stretch out a guitar string,
29:28
Speaker 1: right like it would lose some of the energy. But
29:30
Speaker 1: somehow the Higgs field didn't lose some of that energy.
29:33
Speaker 1: You're saying, like, somehow the Higgs field got stuck with
29:35
Speaker 1: some energy, but it must have also expanded with the
29:38
Speaker 1: rest of the universe, So why didn't the Higgs field
29:40
Speaker 1: lose that energy with the expansion. So the Higgs field
29:43
Speaker 1: is different from the other fields in the structure. It's
29:45
Speaker 1: like potential energy. It has a strange sort of potential
29:48
Speaker 1: energy function, has this double dip in it. We have
29:51
Speaker 1: a whole podcast episode about how the Higgs gets mass
29:54
Speaker 1: and its potential energy. We could spend a whole half
29:56
Speaker 1: hour on that, but it's sufficient to know that the
29:58
Speaker 1: Higgs field likes to relax in different ways than the
30:01
Speaker 1: other field. So it has not just like a potential
30:04
Speaker 1: minimum at zero, it has another potential minimum at a
30:07
Speaker 1: higher value. So where it's like the other fields, you
30:09
Speaker 1: can think of them as a simple valley where water
30:12
Speaker 1: would flow down to the bottom. The Higgs field is different.
30:14
Speaker 1: It has this like extra little double dips of the
30:17
Speaker 1: water gets stuck at a higher place and can't make
30:19
Speaker 1: it all the way down to the bottom. It sounds
30:21
Speaker 1: like the Higgs field doesn't know how to relax, maybe
30:24
Speaker 1: needs to take some meditation classes or something. Well, you
30:27
Speaker 1: don't want the Higgs field to chill out, because the
30:29
Speaker 1: universe would be very different if it did. I see
30:32
Speaker 1: you like the Higgs beans stressed out. I like the
30:34
Speaker 1: universe the way it is, even if that means the
30:36
Speaker 1: Higgs is kind of tense. I guess we could talk
30:39
Speaker 1: about like how what the Higgs field doesn't relax, But
30:42
Speaker 1: the point is that the Higgs field doesn't relax, and
30:44
Speaker 1: so it has some kind of energy right now, and
30:47
Speaker 1: it's that energy where our mass comes the massive small
30:50
Speaker 1: particles comes from. The energy is exactly where the mass
30:53
Speaker 1: of small particles comes from. Like the electron without the
30:56
Speaker 1: Higgs field would be massless travel at the speed of light,
30:59
Speaker 1: you would have no mass. But because the Higgs is there,
31:02
Speaker 1: the electron interacts with it, and that changes the way
31:05
Speaker 1: the electron moves because it now has this internal energy
31:09
Speaker 1: from its interaction with the Higgs field. The interaction, as
31:12
Speaker 1: you say, it comes from the energy of the Higgs field. Well,
31:14
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Like, can you maybe explain it
31:16
Speaker 1: to us, Like it has energy and somehow it gives
31:18
Speaker 1: that energy too particles to make them slower, or because
31:23
Speaker 1: it has energy, it caused particles more to move through space.
31:28
Speaker 1: What's the connection there? So every kind of particle that
31:31
Speaker 1: we know about, like the electron and the quarks. There's
31:33
Speaker 1: actually two different versions of them. We call them the
31:36
Speaker 1: left handed version and the right handed version. And this
31:39
Speaker 1: has to do with whether their spin is pointed in
31:42
Speaker 1: the same direction they're moving or not. We've talked about
31:44
Speaker 1: it on the podcast several times. You can think about
31:46
Speaker 1: as chirality or helicity, but there's basically two different versions
31:50
Speaker 1: of every particle, the left handed and the right handed version.
31:53
Speaker 1: And what the Higgs can do is it can turn
31:55
Speaker 1: a left handed version into a right handed version. So
31:57
Speaker 1: you have like a left handed electron flying through space,
32:00
Speaker 1: the Higgs can turn it into a right handed version,
32:02
Speaker 1: and then back and forth right. So that's what the
32:04
Speaker 1: Higgs can do, and this is happening trillions of times
32:07
Speaker 1: per second. If you have a particle flying through space,
32:10
Speaker 1: it's like going back and forth. What So I have
32:13
Speaker 1: an electron in space, it's spinning one way and the
32:17
Speaker 1: Higgs flips it around. Is that what you're saying, Yes, exactly.
32:20
Speaker 1: The Higgs can flip a left handed electron into a
32:23
Speaker 1: right handed electron like it knocks it, like it hits it.
32:28
Speaker 1: It just makes the spin unstable. What's a good way
32:32
Speaker 1: to visualize it? Or think about why that happens. So
32:36
Speaker 1: just because it's a tense and stressed out it likes
32:38
Speaker 1: to slap electrons around. The way to think about it
32:41
Speaker 1: is that if the universe can do something, then it happens.
32:45
Speaker 1: Was So when a left handed electron if flying through space,
32:47
Speaker 1: it can use the Higgs boson to convert into a
32:50
Speaker 1: right handed electron. It's a possibility, just the same way
32:54
Speaker 1: an electron can radiate a photon. And so if electron
32:58
Speaker 1: is flying through the universe long enough, then it will happen.
33:01
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing electrons do. They do
33:03
Speaker 1: everything that they are allowed to do. All the possibilities
33:06
Speaker 1: eventually come to reality. And so left handed electrons can
33:10
Speaker 1: convert to right handed electrons and back and forth, and
33:13
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson is what's required to do this. And
33:16
Speaker 1: so essentially the electron that we know and love, what
33:19
Speaker 1: we call the electron, is actually this like combination of
33:22
Speaker 1: the left handed electron and the right hand electron combined
33:26
Speaker 1: with the Higgs boson. You need the Higgs boson there
33:29
Speaker 1: to glue them together. So the electron that we know
33:32
Speaker 1: is sort of like a mishmash of the left handed electron,
33:34
Speaker 1: the right handed electron with the Higgs boson there to
33:37
Speaker 1: glue them together into this massive particle. The left handed
33:40
Speaker 1: electron the right hand electron by themselves neither of them
33:43
Speaker 1: have mass, but the way they move to the universe
33:46
Speaker 1: constantly flip flapping back and forth using the Higgs boson.
33:49
Speaker 1: The overall motion of that thing is something that has
33:52
Speaker 1: energy and moves like a particle with mass. You mean,
33:57
Speaker 1: like the Higgs boson is what causes it to flip
34:00
Speaker 1: back and forth, and because it's flipping back and forth,
34:03
Speaker 1: it makes it harder to move somehow, and then that's
34:07
Speaker 1: where where the mask comes from. Yeah, precisely. The way
34:10
Speaker 1: you can think about, like photons flying through empty space
34:12
Speaker 1: go at the speed of light, but photons flying through
34:15
Speaker 1: material they have to stop and interact with all those atoms,
34:17
Speaker 1: so there's zig zagging back and forth, and the effective
34:20
Speaker 1: speed of that photon is lower than the speed of
34:23
Speaker 1: light in a vacuum. An electron moving through space is
34:26
Speaker 1: interacting with the Higgs field and doing that gives it mass.
34:30
Speaker 1: It doesn't slow it down. It's a different kind of interaction.
34:33
Speaker 1: It changes its internal stored energy, makes this new sort
34:37
Speaker 1: of effective particle not a composite particle. It's not like
34:40
Speaker 1: we're talking about how the proton has quarks inside of it.
34:43
Speaker 1: We're not saying the electron literally has a left handed
34:46
Speaker 1: and right handed particle inside them which click together. This
34:50
Speaker 1: is like a new elementary particle that is made of
34:54
Speaker 1: these interactions. Where you're saying an electron, it's not really
34:58
Speaker 1: an electron, like an electron is really to half electrons. Well,
35:01
Speaker 1: I'm saying the electron that we know and love and
35:03
Speaker 1: then we eat in our cereal every morning is different
35:06
Speaker 1: from the kinds of electrons we would have in the
35:08
Speaker 1: universe without the Higgs boson. So without the Higgs boson,
35:11
Speaker 1: not only would all these particles be massless, but they
35:13
Speaker 1: would all be split into their left and right handed versions.
35:17
Speaker 1: And the same is true of every other particle. Not split,
35:20
Speaker 1: but like each particle would have to decide if it
35:22
Speaker 1: was spinning one way or the other, and they would
35:25
Speaker 1: stay that way. Yes, exactly, they would stay that way
35:28
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't convert. So left handed electrons would fly
35:31
Speaker 1: through the universe massless at the speed of light and
35:33
Speaker 1: not like flip flop back and forth to right handed electrons.
35:36
Speaker 1: So I'm an electron in the universe. I'm sitting here
35:39
Speaker 1: or flying around and I'm pointing one way, but because
35:42
Speaker 1: the Higgs field is there, the Higgs field is like, hey,
35:45
Speaker 1: here's some energy, I guess, or here's a mechanism for
35:48
Speaker 1: you to flip back and forth, and so why not
35:50
Speaker 1: I flip back and forth one hundred trillion trillion times
35:53
Speaker 1: per second. Yeah, So the top cork is more massive.
35:56
Speaker 1: It flips back and forth more often than the electron,
35:58
Speaker 1: which has less mass than the top quark. And that's
36:02
Speaker 1: why top quarks have more mass, because they're more affected
36:05
Speaker 1: by the Higgs boson. It couples to them more tightly,
36:07
Speaker 1: it does this flip flopping back and forth more often.
36:10
Speaker 1: And it just so happens that this flip flopping effect
36:14
Speaker 1: is sort of related to how it moves through the
36:16
Speaker 1: universe in a way that it feels like it has inersion. Exactly.
36:19
Speaker 1: You do the calculation for all these interactions, and you say,
36:22
Speaker 1: what is it like for this particle to move? And
36:24
Speaker 1: you get exactly the same effect as if you had
36:27
Speaker 1: an elementary particle that really had mass on its own,
36:30
Speaker 1: if it was just like a property of that particle,
36:33
Speaker 1: you get exactly the same equations of motion. So these
36:36
Speaker 1: two massless particles flip flopping back and forth between each other,
36:40
Speaker 1: moving exactly the same way as if you had an
36:42
Speaker 1: elementary particle with its own mass. And so it's all
36:46
Speaker 1: due to this kind of unrelaxed energy that the Higgs
36:49
Speaker 1: field has. And so I guess now we can ask
36:52
Speaker 1: a question like what if that field was zero, Like
36:55
Speaker 1: what if the universe had a Higgs field that was
36:58
Speaker 1: able to relax that maybe meditated it's a medication perhaps
37:03
Speaker 1: chilled out and went to zero. Right, that's the kind
37:05
Speaker 1: of the question we're asking today. And so the sort
37:08
Speaker 1: of three big effects Number one is that all these
37:12
Speaker 1: particles would be split. Instead of having left and right
37:15
Speaker 1: handed particles sort of merged together into the particles we know,
37:18
Speaker 1: we'd have separate versions of everything as we just talked about.
37:21
Speaker 1: So the top left and top right would be different
37:23
Speaker 1: particles instead of being combined together into the massive top sandwich. Wait,
37:28
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Like it would still be separate particles,
37:30
Speaker 1: they just kind of wouldn't be flipping back and forth. Well, right, now,
37:33
Speaker 1: the top left doesn't exist as its own particle, right,
37:35
Speaker 1: what we have is the top qurk top quark is
37:38
Speaker 1: a combination of top left and top right. But a
37:40
Speaker 1: top quark can spin left, a top quark can be
37:42
Speaker 1: left handed. There's a bit of a subtle mathematical distinction
37:45
Speaker 1: here between chirality, which is sort of like the nature
37:49
Speaker 1: of the particle mathematically, is it left handed or right
37:52
Speaker 1: handed particle? And holicity, which is actually talking about the
37:55
Speaker 1: physical spin of the particle or we're talking about here,
37:58
Speaker 1: is more like a quantum mechanical label of these things
38:01
Speaker 1: being left or right handed, and that has to do
38:03
Speaker 1: with how the weak force interacts with them. Remember, the
38:05
Speaker 1: weak force only interacts with left handed particles and not
38:08
Speaker 1: right handed particles, and so this is more about that
38:11
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical left handedness, not the physical spin of the particle.
38:17
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then that's one effect that having a
38:19
Speaker 1: zero Higgs field would have on the universes that I
38:22
Speaker 1: guess particles like the electron and the top quark would
38:25
Speaker 1: not be flip flopping back and forth. Yeah, exactly, These fermions,
38:28
Speaker 1: instead of being combined together into the particles that we know,
38:31
Speaker 1: they would be totally separate. We'd have two completely different
38:34
Speaker 1: versions of every particle. And that's actually connected to one
38:37
Speaker 1: of the other big implications of having the Higgs field,
38:40
Speaker 1: which is how it connects the electromagnetic force to the
38:43
Speaker 1: weak force. Let's get into that effect of having a
38:46
Speaker 1: zero Higgs field, but first let's take another quick break.
39:02
Speaker 1: Right we are imagining a universe today where the Higgs
39:05
Speaker 1: field is zero, and so we talked about what the
39:08
Speaker 1: Higgs field is, kind of why it has a non
39:12
Speaker 1: zero or what has some energy to it whit can relax,
39:16
Speaker 1: and kind of what the effect of that is on particles,
39:19
Speaker 1: which is to give them the feeling that they have mass.
39:22
Speaker 1: And so I guess if you take away the Higgs field,
39:26
Speaker 1: or at least just make it zero, then particles wouldn't
39:30
Speaker 1: feel like they have mass. That's what we just talked about,
39:32
Speaker 1: right that particles wouldn't be flip flopping back and forth,
39:34
Speaker 1: and so they would move through the universe like they
39:38
Speaker 1: didn't have mass exactly. It would move to the universe
39:41
Speaker 1: without mass, and they would be split into these left
39:44
Speaker 1: handed and right handed versions. It would be very different
39:46
Speaker 1: kind of universe. But it doesn't just affect the matter particles.
39:50
Speaker 1: Where we're talking about right now is the fermions, the electrons,
39:52
Speaker 1: the quarks, all the things that make up matter. It
39:54
Speaker 1: would also affect the forces that exist in the universe,
39:58
Speaker 1: not just the matter. Oh you mean the Higgs field
40:01
Speaker 1: also gives mass to forces. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly.
40:05
Speaker 1: Remember our story. Why we even know the Higgs field
40:07
Speaker 1: is there is because Peter Higgs saw this connection between
40:11
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism, which was one force, and the weak force,
40:15
Speaker 1: and he realized, oh, these two things actually click together
40:18
Speaker 1: mathematically into a bigger piece of this sort of universe puzzle.
40:22
Speaker 1: Except there was a missing bit there, and that was
40:24
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. But he recognized that electricity and magnetism
40:28
Speaker 1: and the weak force are very very similar. So what
40:31
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson actually does is it unifies these two things.
40:34
Speaker 1: It connects electricity and magnetism and the weak forces together
40:38
Speaker 1: and makes a new force called electro weak. But when
40:42
Speaker 1: it does so, it fundamentally changes both of those forces.
40:46
Speaker 1: Wait what somehow the Higgs field energy makes it like
40:50
Speaker 1: it merges the two forces together, or it just like
40:53
Speaker 1: kind of provides a connection. So without the Higgs field,
40:56
Speaker 1: we would have two different other forces that were separate
40:59
Speaker 1: but very similar to each other, and the Higgs field
41:02
Speaker 1: changes both of them, and it sort of breaks them
41:04
Speaker 1: a little bit. So, for example, like there's the electromagnetic force,
41:08
Speaker 1: which makes things with electrical charge repel or be attracted
41:12
Speaker 1: to each other, like electrons repelling each other, or a
41:15
Speaker 1: plus in a minus being attracted to each other over
41:17
Speaker 1: electric charge. And we also have the weak force, which
41:20
Speaker 1: is weak, but it also kind of makes things repel
41:23
Speaker 1: or attract depending on the weak charge. And so somehow
41:26
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson modifies both of them. Yes, so what
41:29
Speaker 1: we are seeing is the Higgs boson already having done
41:33
Speaker 1: its modification. Electricity, magnetism and the weak force are after
41:37
Speaker 1: the Higgs has already done its work. So if you
41:40
Speaker 1: start in the universe without the Higgs field, you have
41:43
Speaker 1: two other different forces we call them hypercharge forces and
41:47
Speaker 1: isospin forces, and the Higgs field mixes those up and
41:50
Speaker 1: makes it like a new, weird combination of those things
41:53
Speaker 1: into what we today call electricity, magnetism and the weak force.
41:58
Speaker 1: So without the Higgs field, so untangle that it's not
42:01
Speaker 1: like you had the electromagnetic force and the weak force,
42:03
Speaker 1: in the Higgs field MUSHes the two. It's like you
42:06
Speaker 1: had two other forces and then the Higgs field MUSHes
42:10
Speaker 1: them together into something that we still call two things. Yes, exactly,
42:15
Speaker 1: and we still call them two things because it MUSHes
42:16
Speaker 1: them together in an unequal way. So it takes the
42:19
Speaker 1: particles of these other sort of pure forces, mixes them
42:22
Speaker 1: up together to give us the photon the Z in
42:24
Speaker 1: the two ws. But it's not equal about it. It
42:27
Speaker 1: leaves the photon with no mass, but it gives the
42:30
Speaker 1: WS and the Z a lot of mass. And so
42:34
Speaker 1: it changes electricity and magnetism and the weak force in
42:37
Speaker 1: very different ways. And that's why the weak force is weak,
42:40
Speaker 1: because the Higgs field gives so much mass to its
42:43
Speaker 1: particles that it makes them very short lived and very ineffective. Now,
42:47
Speaker 1: this mushing of forces happens because the Higgs field exists,
42:50
Speaker 1: or because it has energy. Like if the Higgs field
42:54
Speaker 1: still exists but had zero energy, would these forces still
42:57
Speaker 1: join up. The forces would not join up, because the
43:00
Speaker 1: Higgs fields exists and has energy, and it interacts with
43:04
Speaker 1: these particles. Also, it doesn't just interact with fermions. It
43:07
Speaker 1: also interacts with these sort of pure force particles, and
43:10
Speaker 1: in doing so it actually gives up some of the
43:12
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons. The Higgs field actually can oscillate in lots
43:15
Speaker 1: of different ways. There are four different Higgs bosons that
43:19
Speaker 1: it can make. Three of them get used up in
43:22
Speaker 1: order to make the WS and the Z massive. They
43:25
Speaker 1: get sort of like eaten by the W and the
43:27
Speaker 1: Z as they get made. So then if the Higgs
43:30
Speaker 1: field has zero energy, which is what we're asking today,
43:32
Speaker 1: then what would happen These two forces, or this force
43:35
Speaker 1: that we call the electricweek would split into these other
43:38
Speaker 1: two forces. Yeah, exactly. First of all, there'd be four
43:41
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons in our universe instead of one, right, and
43:45
Speaker 1: electricity magnetism would not be entertangled in the way that
43:48
Speaker 1: they are now. So we would not have the photon,
43:50
Speaker 1: we would not have the W, we would not have
43:52
Speaker 1: the Z. Wait, what do you mean we're gonna have
43:54
Speaker 1: the photon? We wouldn't have light without the Higgs boson
43:57
Speaker 1: or the Higgs field. The electromagnetic field that we of
44:00
Speaker 1: today is actually like a distortion of two other fields
44:04
Speaker 1: mixed together by the Higgs boson. So the photon is
44:07
Speaker 1: actually a combination of two other force particles. So without
44:12
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, you'd have these four particles we call
44:14
Speaker 1: them the X and the W, one two three. The
44:17
Speaker 1: photon is a mixture of the X and the W three.
44:20
Speaker 1: So then you would have a universe without light, or
44:22
Speaker 1: you would have a universe dead with something else that
44:25
Speaker 1: we would call light. Yeah, we'd have a universe with
44:27
Speaker 1: different force particles. None of them would be exactly like
44:30
Speaker 1: the photon, though they would all be massless. I don't
44:32
Speaker 1: know if we'd call one of them light or not,
44:34
Speaker 1: but it would be a very different universe with very
44:37
Speaker 1: different forces. Like I wonder if the effect would be
44:39
Speaker 1: that the electromagnetic force is the same, but the weak
44:42
Speaker 1: force would be different, you know what I mean? Like
44:44
Speaker 1: it would be universe that we could compare with ours
44:47
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, the electromagnetic force is the same.
44:49
Speaker 1: There's still something we call the acts like a photon,
44:52
Speaker 1: but then everything else is different. There would be a particle,
44:55
Speaker 1: the X particle, which is similar sort of to the
44:57
Speaker 1: photon in that it's a single particle that mediates a
45:00
Speaker 1: force that would be about as powerful as electricity and magnetism.
45:04
Speaker 1: And that X particle, which would mediate the hypercharge force
45:08
Speaker 1: in that universe, would also interact with all these particles.
45:12
Speaker 1: You would be able to interact with all the quarks
45:14
Speaker 1: and the leptons and all those kinds of things. So
45:16
Speaker 1: it'd be sort of similar to the photon. And then
45:18
Speaker 1: we'd have these other three particles, the W one, two three,
45:22
Speaker 1: from what we call the isospin force. It would be
45:24
Speaker 1: sort of similar to the weak interaction, except it would
45:27
Speaker 1: be as powerful as electromagnetism because it doesn't have the
45:31
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson field sort of slowing it down. But it
45:34
Speaker 1: would only affect things with the charge for that force, right, Like,
45:37
Speaker 1: it wouldn't necessarily affect the electrons. It would only affect
45:40
Speaker 1: left handed particles, but it would affect the electron. Yeah,
45:43
Speaker 1: just the way the weak force, for example, does interact
45:45
Speaker 1: with the electron today. Interesting now, and you said there's
45:49
Speaker 1: a third effect of having a zero Higgs field too, Yeah,
45:52
Speaker 1: that's right. The third effect, which it might be the biggest,
45:55
Speaker 1: is the one that would blow us all up, the biggest,
45:57
Speaker 1: bigger than taking away the mass of the electron and
46:01
Speaker 1: splitting and totally changing the electromagnetic force and making photons disappear.
46:06
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is the one would literally blow up
46:09
Speaker 1: your spot. I mean, it would make all the particles massless, right,
46:12
Speaker 1: and so the electron is massless. The quarks are massless,
46:15
Speaker 1: and as we talked about earlier, most of the mass
46:18
Speaker 1: in the universe doesn't come from the Higgs field, but
46:21
Speaker 1: the constructions that you make out of those particles do
46:25
Speaker 1: rely in the Higgs field doing its thing. You know,
46:27
Speaker 1: for example, you want to build an atom, you need
46:29
Speaker 1: to do that atom electron that does have mass. If
46:32
Speaker 1: you took a hydrogen atom and you suddenly made that
46:35
Speaker 1: electron massless, what would happen, Well, it would fly off
46:39
Speaker 1: at the speed of light. Right, A proton can't hold
46:42
Speaker 1: on to an electron that's moving at the speed of light.
46:45
Speaker 1: So the whole construction binding electrons into that proton to
46:48
Speaker 1: make an atom rely in the particles having a little
46:50
Speaker 1: bit of mass. Without that mass, everything would be totally different. Well,
46:54
Speaker 1: it couldn't hold on to the electron where it was,
46:58
Speaker 1: But I wonder if it could still, you know, trap
47:01
Speaker 1: the electron somehow, even if it's moving at this speed
47:03
Speaker 1: of light, like for example, a black hole can trap
47:06
Speaker 1: photons even though they move at the speed of light. Yeah,
47:08
Speaker 1: you need a much stronger force to hold onto the
47:11
Speaker 1: electron or it would need to orbit like a much
47:14
Speaker 1: higher distance for example. But the fundament the whole structure
47:16
Speaker 1: of the atom would be very very different. Electrons in
47:19
Speaker 1: their current orbitals, if you suddenly reduced the Higgs field
47:23
Speaker 1: down to zero, they would fly off at the speed
47:25
Speaker 1: of light. So basically all of our atoms would explode.
47:28
Speaker 1: It probably is possible to make new sort of stable
47:31
Speaker 1: constructions out of these new particles, but it would be
47:34
Speaker 1: totally different from what we experienced today. M Yeah, So
47:37
Speaker 1: like if you flip the switch to a zero for
47:40
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, now everything would explode. But if you
47:43
Speaker 1: start at the universe with a zero Higgs field, there
47:45
Speaker 1: would be maybe a universe with planets and stuff in it.
47:48
Speaker 1: It just would look super different than what it does today.
47:50
Speaker 1: It would definitely look super different from what it does today,
47:53
Speaker 1: and it would make all sorts of probably really interesting,
47:56
Speaker 1: complicated emergence structures that are hard for us to predict.
48:00
Speaker 1: It requires like solving the strong force equations to understand
48:04
Speaker 1: how those massless quarks might come together to make stable
48:07
Speaker 1: particles out of which you could build bigger things. I
48:10
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. It's very complicated. Like
48:12
Speaker 1: even today, if you said start from quarks and electrons
48:16
Speaker 1: and predict chemistry, we don't know how to do that.
48:19
Speaker 1: We don't know how to do calculations to predict what
48:21
Speaker 1: chemistry would happen, not to mention biology and psychology, and
48:24
Speaker 1: so we can't do that for other universes. Also, can
48:27
Speaker 1: you predictive food trucks would still be here? I'm just
48:31
Speaker 1: saying you said the word inevitable earlier that was really
48:33
Speaker 1: more hopeful than based on hard calculations. Unfortunately, we cannot
48:37
Speaker 1: predict whether food trucks would exist in a universe without
48:40
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. It's a deep question of philosophy. Well,
48:43
Speaker 1: I guess maybe the last question we can ask about
48:45
Speaker 1: this strange and weird different universe is what would it
48:50
Speaker 1: mean for gravity? Like, if the Higgs field would zero,
48:52
Speaker 1: would gravity be different at all? Or could the universe
48:55
Speaker 1: still make like black holes and planets using gravity. Yeah,
48:58
Speaker 1: it's an important thing to floor because a lot of
49:00
Speaker 1: people connect the concept of mass with gravity, right, and
49:04
Speaker 1: so they think that the Higgs boson is maybe responsible
49:07
Speaker 1: for gravity somehow. But remember that the connection between the
49:10
Speaker 1: Higgs boson and mass is only for elementary particles. There
49:12
Speaker 1: are other ways to get mass. That connection is not
49:15
Speaker 1: really that deep and tight, But gravity is very deeply
49:19
Speaker 1: connected to energy and that includes mass. So none of
49:23
Speaker 1: this would change the role of gravity at all. Right,
49:25
Speaker 1: Gravity would still operate. It would still bend space. It
49:28
Speaker 1: would still change the path of particles even if they're
49:31
Speaker 1: all massless and moving at the speed of light. Remember
49:34
Speaker 1: that gravity can bend space that photons move through, and
49:37
Speaker 1: so gravity would still exist and you could still get
49:40
Speaker 1: black holes on all sorts of other stuff. Gravity would
49:43
Speaker 1: still tug things together, right, because gravity sort of exists
49:46
Speaker 1: almost in a way outside of quantum fields, right, or
49:50
Speaker 1: at least the way it's formulated by Einstein. Yeah, general
49:53
Speaker 1: relativity is not a quantum theory. We don't understand the
49:55
Speaker 1: connections between general relativity and quantum theory at all. And
49:58
Speaker 1: so you're right, if we're changing one of the knobs
50:00
Speaker 1: of the quantum fields, that doesn't change our understanding of gravity.
50:04
Speaker 1: So there would still be energy in the universe even
50:06
Speaker 1: if fundamental particles didn't have mass, and so there would
50:09
Speaker 1: still be gravitational effects on everything. Would you still have protons? Right?
50:14
Speaker 1: Like I wonder, like you know, if the Higgs field
50:16
Speaker 1: was zero, quarks would have no mass, would they still
50:19
Speaker 1: bind together those due to the strong force the strong
50:22
Speaker 1: force would still be there. It would still exist. The
50:24
Speaker 1: strong force is not affected by the Higgs boson the
50:27
Speaker 1: way these other forces are, because the gluons are massless
50:29
Speaker 1: and they don't interact with those Higgs bosons, So you
50:31
Speaker 1: would still have the strong force. Probably it would be
50:33
Speaker 1: able to bind things together into protons or proton like structures,
50:37
Speaker 1: but they would be different because the quarks now have
50:40
Speaker 1: no mass, and so that would definitely change them. They
50:42
Speaker 1: might be like bigger and fluffier than the protons we
50:46
Speaker 1: know today. I wonder if you could even like catch
50:49
Speaker 1: quarks to make protons because they're moves ziving around at
50:51
Speaker 1: the speed of light. Yeah, it's hard to think about,
50:54
Speaker 1: all right, Well, it sounds like the answer to the
50:56
Speaker 1: question of whether the universe would be different if the
50:59
Speaker 1: Higgs field were row is a big fat yes, a big,
51:02
Speaker 1: massive heavy yes. It would make the fundamental particles move
51:06
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, which would be totally trippy,
51:09
Speaker 1: like the quarts and the electronics you're made out of
51:11
Speaker 1: would be zipp around around as fast as light. It
51:14
Speaker 1: would change the forces like we wouldn't have magnets. I
51:18
Speaker 1: guess we wouldn't have electromagnetism the way it is, and
51:21
Speaker 1: we'd also have more Higgs bosons. So instead of winning
51:24
Speaker 1: one Nobel Prize, maybe we could win four. Oh yeah,
51:29
Speaker 1: that would reduce a number of murdered physicists in your mystery.
51:33
Speaker 1: Well it would, I guess it would give you like
51:35
Speaker 1: three sequels, and so maybe the body count would be higher.
51:38
Speaker 1: Oh man, there's no suspicious death of potentially Nobel Prize
51:43
Speaker 1: winning pusiness. I want that on the record. I know
51:46
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds kind of suspicious. In fact, it's
51:49
Speaker 1: kind of a funny rule that Nobel put in his
51:52
Speaker 1: word right, It's almost like he was asking for it.
51:55
Speaker 1: It's almost like he foresaw this true crime podcast. He
51:58
Speaker 1: was a visionary. All right, Well, we hope that made
52:01
Speaker 1: you think a little bit about the universe that we
52:03
Speaker 1: do live in, Like how precarious it is. First of upgrade,
52:06
Speaker 1: because we don't know if the Higgs field is going
52:08
Speaker 1: to flip to having zero energy. It could happen anytime,
52:11
Speaker 1: that's right. Irresponsible particle physicists might trigger the Higgs field
52:14
Speaker 1: to collapse down to its lower vacuum state, changing the
52:18
Speaker 1: very nature of the universe, and food trucks yeah, and
52:22
Speaker 1: so we live in a precarious universe as the way
52:24
Speaker 1: it is for forces that are way outside of our control.
52:27
Speaker 1: So I guess maybe the real lesson here is to
52:30
Speaker 1: appreciate the universe that we live in, because it could
52:32
Speaker 1: have been very different and we wouldn't be here. That's right,
52:35
Speaker 1: So go out and patronize that food truck. We hope
52:37
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
52:48
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
52:51
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast
52:55
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:59
Speaker 1: or work ever you listen to your favorite shows