Well because the Lagrangian was constructed starting from the exploitation of the mechanism possible at electroweak symmetry breaking (hence that sector and not the strong force one) and providing a scalar field that can achieve the needed minimally so to speak. For this reason its connection is an electroweak non Abelian one and you do not have other terms generated involving the strong force directly. So you see its not circular in the naive sense. It is a result of the fact that Higgs is an electroweak symmetry breaking effort not a higher symmetry breaking mechanism. One could say its an artifact of the attempt to generate mass not requiring higher complexity (yet). Clearly of course all these remain not exactly very satisfactory constructions.
But the point i was making is that to see what kind of results you get in the experiment you basically create a Lagrangian satisfying basic principles you have observed in simpler experiments and introduce mechanisms that solve some issues and which also make additional predictions that then are observed. A theory is temporarily successful if it can receive such satisfactory tests even if it wasnt designed with them in mind. Now to go and calculate further complicated phenomena of the theory you will indeed use that Lagrangian and it will be the reason you get the results you get which then need to be experimentally tested for further consistency. In that sense it is not trivial to look at the Lagrangian for reasons some experiments give what they give. It is because that particular Lagrangian up to a point does a good job even though it was not created trying to fit those other experiments you are now doing. Bottom line Higgs is related to the electroweak sector. The symmetry breaking it relates to is the first one if the standard model as you go up in energy.
What is interesting to say is that because the introduction of the terms are not exactly very natural (the mechanism seems a bit of a design i mean) its plausible to start running into problems eventually. And i think LHC will show that. It will be interesting furthermore to see that SUSY doesnt have the answer either. But that remains to be seen.
Also regarding the link (thanks) i meant a paper or something that treats standard model with reasonable practical respect not the insanity that is to try to run its predictions to 10^10 GeV or higher which is kind of audacious. We all know Standard model will fail and we cant use therefore its structure at these high energies in order to deduce there is something wrong with its Higgs mass predictions. We cannot make reliable such mass predictions in my opinion using a theory we have no control of its depth of applicability (in other words the very arguments used to refute that mass are originating by using the logic of something we know will fail so what is the point in trusting the conclusion as pitfall of the theory i mean, nobody really expected it to be correct up to such levels necessarily). We already know its not enough so how do you take its extreme projection in very high energies to see if it can predict properly constraints the mass of Higgs. This is not a proper process. I expect a proper way to claim the SM fails the Higgs mass by using current energies or nearby and prior experiments not a very deep questionable in validity version of a theory we already know it fails up there in all likelihood.
So you see what i mean? I am not defending standard model, i just want a more proper way to attack its logic/consistency by using its current structure. I dont think they had such constraints for the mass therefore. It would be interesting to see for instance some prior experiments and their detailed results (eg masses, widths, branching ratios in productions via different reactions etc on Z,W, top etc) prove not consistent within standard model to the mass observed recently. That would be indeed substantial but i havent seen anything like that done (part of the reason is that the SM has so many free parameters and the other candidates even worse lol, that you can play with and remain consistent by simply hiding behind the fact you dont know them exactly yet. Of course at some point we will be able to run into problem in very fine accurate measurements of various phenomena by using the way all these parameters mix in higher order effect predictions.)
Last edited by masque de Z; 07-12-2012 at 11:11 AM.
This is circular reasoning.. you could just as easily say the particles are massless and not in the Lagrangian because they don't interact with the Higgs field
Well, to be fair the Higgs field does interact with photons...But I think how to phrase things in order to understand why the Higgs gives gives mass to all particles with mass would be....
"Why does the SM Lagrangian not have explicit mass terms?" For bosons, you cannot put in a mass term by hand directly without violating gauge symmetry. The same is true for fermions provided they are chiral, which is true for standard model fermions. So all these masses (that are obv observed) must come from the ground state spontaneously breaking something that is a symmetry of the Lagrangian. So the obv follow up is "Why does the vacuum break electro weak symmetry?" ....and I don't think anybody really has a good answer for why that happens..... Anthropics really could be the only answer.
well maybe they shouldnt have called it "the God" particle. maybe then there would be less confussion between layman.
There's a difference between laymen and idiots. There's also a subset of idiots who are one-issue idiots.
Those people appear to be one-issue idiots who are only concerned with the fact that some people don't share their beliefs/imaginary friend. I don't think that it's reasonable to try to worry about them when discussing science with the general public. (I do think that the God particle thing seems a bit dumb, but everyone who's not a huge idiot realizes that it's a name and not a description.)
Who exactly is responsible for this "god particle" crap initially? I was just trying to explain to my family that "no one" calls it the god particle, and they pointed out, correctly, that it seems at least that most popular journalists do. When and how did it start?
It reminds me of something that will initially seem completely different: the ivory-billed woodpecker, Campephilus principalis. When the species was said1 to have been rediscovered a few years ago in an Arkansas swampland, the (many) articles that appeared about it in the popular press often said it was also known as the "lord god bird". Problem: I've been a birder for 35 years, have interacted with birders in all walks of life and in every state and province, and have had a fair amount of acquaintance with professional ornithologist as well, and I have never once heard or seen it referred to that way, by anyone except writers for newspapers, magazines, and blogs intended for popular consumption. Someone made it up (I don't know who), and that someone just got quoted and requoted a thousand times by "journalists" who probably didn't care that what they were printing was totally false — and eventually, it wasn't even false any more because they'd printed it so many times.
1 I have strong reason to believe that in fact the bird was not found at all — not just that the claim was a mistake, but that it was a hoax, with many people in on it. I can't prove it, but I'm pretty convinced — and yes, I'm aware of the existence of video; I believe it was faked, and that the experts who evaluated the evidence were in on it. (They had reason to be — it was to get the area protected.) In my opinion the species has been extinct for decades. I could support this with anecdotal evidence, but it would rely heavily on my own personal experience and guesses and that's another thread for another day.
The Higgs boson is often referred to as the "God particle" by individuals outside the scientific community, after the title of Leon Lederman's popular science book on particle physics, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest, many scientists dislike it, since it is sensational and overstates the particle's importance. Its discovery would still leave unanswered questions about the unification of quantum chromodynamics, the electroweak interaction, and gravity, as well as the ultimate origin of the universe. Higgs, an atheist himself, is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle", because the term "might offend people who are religious".
In explaining his choice of nickname for the particle, Lederman writes:
He then goes on to propose a parallel between the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel and the ambitions of modern physicists to build accelerators that will reveal the secrets of the universe.
A renaming competition conducted by the science correspondent for the British Guardian newspaper chose the name "the champagne bottle boson" as the best from among their submissions: "The bottom of a champagne bottle is in the shape of the Higgs potential and is often used as an illustration in physics lectures. So it's not an embarrassingly grandiose name, it is memorable, and [it] has some physics connection too."
I'm still perplexed about something, and its not something that hasn't been stated by many others before.
Suppose that these discoveries sooner or later lead to the ability to time travel. That would mean that the physical laws under which we are presently operating allow it, and we simply do not yet possess the technology to make it happen.
So the question is, wouldn't our present time frame be flooded with visitors from all parts and all times across the galaxy, including earthlings from the future?
I'm still perplexed about something, and its not something that hasn't been stated by many others before.
Suppose that these discoveries sooner or later lead to the ability to time travel. That would mean that the physical laws under which we are presently operating allow it, and we simply do not yet possess the technology to make it happen.
So the question is, wouldn't our present time frame be flooded with visitors from all parts and all times across the galaxy, including earthlings from the future?
What if the time traveling device only permits to travel back to the date it first was started?
As in, you need two machines, one as the entrance the other as the exit.
Two Plus Two
Linear Mode
