No, the Higgs boson does not explain the mass of the Sun!

Article originally published on July 11, 2012

It is not easy to really explain what the Higgs bosonalso called the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson, and why it is so important for physicists elementary particles and even potentially for cosmologists. Several pictures and analogies have been proposed. But as with all analogies, they can be misleading if taken at face value. Let’s examine this a little closer.

Let’s clarify right away. It is wrong to say that the Higgs boson explain the mass of the matter ordinary. Somehow it absolutely does not explain the mass of the SunEarth or atoms that make up human beings. It is incorrect and even false in a certain sense to say that the Higgs boson explains the mass of elementary particles. Just as it is wrong to say that theuniverse is filled with Higgs bosons and that it is by colliding with these bosons that matter particles become massive.

There is no Higgs boson around us, to say the least, no more and no less than electron pairs-positron or of black mini holes charges arising and disappearing from the vacuum as a result of quantum fluctuations.

“But then we would have been lied to? » many readers will no doubt think. No way ! If you read or listen to what has been said by the majority of physicists, it is the Higgs field that gives mass to elementary particles, not the Higgs boson. But why does this change everything and why does it still not explain the mass of atoms and the Sun?

A world of fields

To understand it, one must grasp the difference between a field and a field excitation, that is to say the difference between the ocean and a vague on the ocean or even the water of a swimming pool and the sound which propagates there.

Let’s start by explaining what a field is. For a physicist, it is the data at any point in space of one or more numbers describing a reality physical given. Take the case ofatmosphere on the surface of the Earth. At any point, a thermometer or one barometer allows you to observe and set a temperature and a pressure. So there is a temperature field and a pressure field.

These fields are defined by so-called scalar quantities. Why this word? Quite simply because scala in Latin means “ladder”, ” stairs and that of course when the temperature rises, the liquid in a thermometer climbs along the graduations as one would climb the rungs of a ladder.

But in theatmospherethere is also wind. To characterize it, we use anemometers which measure a speed in a direction and a sense given in each point of the Earth (ideally of course). A direction, a sense and an intensity of a magnitude, like speed, is a vector for a physicist. We have therefore defined a vector field.

Just like in theair, these quantities can be defined in the ocean and at the surface of the oceans. We can also speak of the density field of air and water. In water and in the air, shocks generate sound waves which are variations of the pressure fields. If you drop a stone on the surface of the water, waves will be produced. When they reach a floating plug not too far from where the rock falls, they will cause the movement of the cap. If it is too far away, the waves will have had time to dissipate completely and no movement will result.

For physicists, there are certain fundamental fields which are not, as for sound waves, the wind or the waves, movements or oscillations of a material medium but what matter is made of and the forces acting on matter. The best known are the electromagnetic field or the field of gravitation. But there are also fields of matter at the origin of electrons, quarks and neutrinos.

The particles, the energy packets of moving fields

If we take the example of water at rest in a swimming pool, when a sound wave or a surface wave occurs following the fall of a stone, these waves carryenergy. But in the absence of these waves, the water is still there. Quantum physics tells us that wave energy is in the form of packages discrete, quanta of energy. In the case of a electromagnetic wavethese packets are photons. In the case of sound in a solidthese packets are phononsand for a wave in an electronic field, these packets are either electrons or positrons.

We can now understand what physicists mean when they assert that the existence of the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles. Let’s still take the example of the swimming pool and establish a dictionary of analogies. The Higgs field will be the water in the pool and the Higgs boson will be the energy quanta of the waves in the Higgs field just as there can be sound waves when two swimmers collide in the pool.

Depending on the size and shape of an object, it will be more or less easy to set it in motion in the water. In a vacuum or in very sparse gaseous water, these differences would be eliminated or negligible. Now, the mass, or even more precisely theinertia of an object, is indeed a certain measure of the difficulty one has in setting this object in motion, in moving it. So, in a sense, these objects have mass because they interact with water.

Now, let us recall, in the dictionary that we established previously, the Higgs field is water, the Higgs boson is the energy quanta of a sound wave or a surface wave, a wave, on the water. We now understand that it is absurd to say that an object struggles to move in water, that it has mass, because there are sound waves. This is all the more false since the phenomenon exists even when there is no sound wave.