Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: acecharly on 06/07/2012 18:29:52

Title: If the higgs field gives mass to particles whats its relation with gravity?
Post by: acecharly on 06/07/2012 18:29:52

Mass creates gravity, and we believe the higgs field creates mass so if it produces mass is it creating gravity or even partly is gravity?

Any thoughts

Cheers Ace

Title: Re: If the higgs field gives mass to particles whats its relation with gravity?
Post by: Soul Surfer on 07/07/2012 11:45:48

Now there's a question see my answer where you ask the same question about the graviton.

My guess is that universes arise out of the basic potential of infinite possibilities of fields and dimensions by a process of "natural selection"  Very similar to life on earth.  That is the ones that survive and can reproduce themselves are by far the most probable ones to exist.  This may of course mean that a universe that has evolved, may look superficially rather improbable, as many experts say that our universe does, but if you consider that our universe is creating and seeding many other "universes" in the form of black holes,  each of which could contain a universe as large and complex as ours now is. This is true even if the new universe was only formed from a few solar masses of material from our universe. 

Note to moderators this is NOT a new theory.  In its collapse towards a theoretical "singularity" inside its event horizon. It is totally accepted by all that a black hole will release infinite quantities of gravitational energy inside its event horizon.  Vastly more than the energy that went into the black hole when it was formed in our universe.  This is plenty enough to create a new big bang.  It is just that nobody is bothering to work on the theory at the moment even if current high energy physics tells us a lot about what will happen during the process of collapsing towards this theoretical "singularity" that is very similar to the theoretical "singularity" from which everyone accepts that our universe originated.

I find this total lack of scientific exploration of this possibility very puzzling.

We will never be able to observe what is going on inside a black hole and report back but our current scientific observations will allow us to go a long way down before they fail.  Just saying it becomes a mathematical point is totally absurd and a cop out by the mathematicians.  Trying to do this is probably one of the best ways to show us new ways ahead with both practical and theoretical research

Title: Re: If the higgs field gives mass to particles whats its relation with gravity?
Post by: JP on 07/07/2012 17:30:34

Its important to note that the Higgs field only describes how particles get what is called inertial mass, which is the mass that resists you pushing on it.  If you push a truck and a bicycle with the same force, the bicycle moves much faster than the truck.  This is due to the truck having more inertial mass which "resists" the push.  The Higgs field basically says (in a very hand-waving way) that all particles with mass interact with this field, which bunches up around them in such a way as to them this resistance to pushing or inertial mass. 

There is a different type of mass called gravitational mass that says how particles interact with gravity.  As far as we can tell, gravitational and inertial masses are equal (this is one of the cornerstone assumptions of general relativity).  However, we don't know a good fundamental reason why this must be the case other than that it appears based on our observations. 

So all in all, the Higgs field explains only the cause of inertial mass.  This appears to be equal to gravitational mass, but we don't know why--and we don't have an explanation for how the Higgs field directly might cause gravitational mass.  It will probably require a quantum theory of gravity to explain this.