LHC@home

Hi,

since the Higgs boson ist expected to be found by LHC this should be the right place to ask. The Higgs particle is said to give mass to the other particles, but how does it do that? Is there an intuitive explanation of the mechanism like there is for forces via Feynman graphs? My particle physics book just mentions the analogy to supraconductors as broken symmetry but has no real explanation, and the standard model book I read went over my head since I know very little about quantum field theory. Has the Higgs theory also an explanation of the masses of leptons and quarks, which seem rather arbitrary? And is there already a prediction for its mass like there was for W and Z?

Benno

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This should be a fairly understandable explanation of the Higgs field:
http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~djm/higgsa.html

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Chrulle
Research Assistant & Ex-LHC@home developer
Niels Bohr Institute

What is the significance of the Higgs Boson? I read somewhere that it could lower the mass of a space craft causing an increased speed.

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Bosons are all force carriers, for example the photon that carries the electromagnetic force.

The significance is that the Higgs boson is the particle that is the force carrier for inertial mass.

Now, what you are asking for sounds more like a practical application. This is always very hard to guess. The discovery of quantum mechanics and elctro magnetism led to the laser which in turn led to the DVD drive, but nobody could have predicted that back in the day.

Now what you are alluding to is that if it was possible to directly affect the "force" transfer of a Higgs field, it would be possible to remove the inertia of an object. This would make it possible to achive very high accelaration with very little force.

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Chrulle
Research Assistant & Ex-LHC@home developer
Niels Bohr Institute

>
> Bosons are all force carriers, for example the photon that carries the
> electromagnetic force.
>
> The significance is that the Higgs boson is the particle that is the force
> carrier for inertial mass.
>
> Now, what you are asking for sounds more like a practical application. This is
> always very hard to guess. The discovery of quantum mechanics and elctro
> magnetism led to the laser which in turn led to the DVD drive, but nobody
> could have predicted that back in the day.
>
> Now what you are alluding to is that if it was possible to directly affect the
> "force" transfer of a Higgs field, it would be possible to remove the inertia
> of an object. This would make it possible to achive very high accelaration
> with very little force.
>
>
>
>

Thanks. I actually got Higgs Boson confused with Negative mass. I was reading about Nasa's Warp Drive, When? Website. They said if you put together an atom with a mass with one that has negative mass the mass would disappear.

I was running LHC@Home for the small hope they could produce Antimatter more efficiently but this is ever better. Who needs Antimatter when we can do that.

Feisal
Anti-Nasa and Major proponent for Space

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Now what you are alluding to is that if it was possible to directly affect the "force" transfer of a Higgs field, it would be possible to remove the inertia of an object. This would make it possible to achive very high accelaration with very little force.

although this seams like a possibility as most methods of propulsion rely on conservation of momentum, e.g throwing stuff (gasses, photons, etc), i think even if the strength of the higgs field could be altered there would be no means of using this to your advantage.

however I’m not quite sure what would happen if you were to poke your spaceship with a big stick?

"I was running LHC@Home for the small hope they could produce Antimatter more efficiently but this is ever better. Who needs Antimatter when we can do that."
antimatter has positive mass, but even if a form of matter with negative mass was found i doubt it could be used in any sort of practical application as it would be repelled away from normal matter by gravity and this would be a major problem in ship design!

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Is a rotating magnetic field of 25 Tesla enough to produce Higgs Bosons? This is the field strength, apparently, required to get a spaceship of 150 tons into orbit. Just a thought. Anyone?

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