Thursday, September 11, 2008

JJ: how does matter acquire mass?

When fat chicks eat more McDonald's...
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8 comments:

Tecumseh said...

Who's coming up, in between JJ and Pepe?

9/11/2008 10:58 AM
Mr roT said...

mft, the acquisition of mass referred to here is not what you might think. It's not an real, extant, massless particle becoming a massive one.

What they mean, in a nutshell way too small, is that the standard theory of quantum fields initially treats all the fields (corresponding to particles: photons, electrons, protons,...) as being massless. Through a kind of mathematical trick, these particles are given mass, but what happens is that in order to do so, the math trick produces another goddamned particle called the Higgs boson. Different theories give different predictions for the mass of this predicted particle.

By the way, if you think it is ridiculous for a mathematical stratagem to produce a prediction of a whole new state of matter, keep quiet in front of physicists. This is essentially how antimatter was predicted (by Dirac). This was discovered truly to exist later. The mathematical trick Dirac used was similar to taking the square root. Notice that if you want to solve x^2 = 1, you get two solutions. One of them was the antimatter no one had yet seen in the lab and Dirac had the balls to predict physical existence of out of mathematical necessity!

Anyway, this trick about giving mass to particles seems unavoidable and so lesser physicists than Dirac have predicted the existence of the Higgs and have come up with possible masses.

LHC should be able to produce masses in that ballpark and so that's what they are trying to find out.

My opinion (famously wrong already once in the case of dark matter) is that qft has too many problems to worry about such predictions. The theory needs massive gutting (no pun intended), not a fine finish.

Of course I have not been in physics for 20 years and so if I were, maybe I would think this worthwhile. Who knows? 20 billion bucks might prove me wrong and I would be happy to be so.

9/11/2008 11:24 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...

By the way, if you think it is ridiculous for a mathematical stratagem to produce a prediction of a whole new state of matter, keep quiet in front of physicists.

I don't think it sounds ridiculous at all. If I'm hearing you correct, it's necessary for all disciplines to create new mathematical formula (in the Humanities, we call this constructing new intellectual models) to theorize what might exist. Run the data through the model, then, to see if it works (just don't force it -- we'll eventually find out if they do).

The history of science and scientific ideas and the history of practicioners of science is absolutely fascinating. Keep it coming.

9/11/2008 11:34 AM
Mr roT said...

I thought it absolutely senseless to make Dirac's prediction when I learned how it came about, with what he had.

Maybe we'll get green antigravity floaty cars out of the LHC.

9/11/2008 11:40 AM
Mr roT said...

...or a wormhole to Heaven! Good work, scientists, but not enough! I wants my 72 bitches!

The 2 most asked questions are about: Life after Death and Are we alone in the Universe. This expirement is the start to eventually come close to the truth regarding these fascinating mysteries.
They should go even further with the follow-up expirements such as renacting a supernova or a massive black hole or even generating a worm hole to connect us to whatever lays beyond.
Well Done Scientists but not enough.

Rob Tab, CAPE TOWN

9/11/2008 11:42 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...

What's this life after death shit? What if a wormhole was discovered, though, and it led to a parallel universe where all the chicks gave...

Well, you get the idea.

9/11/2008 1:15 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Maybe the only two brain cells he has will collide and we can gain insight into what happens thereafter...

9/11/2008 6:08 PM
Mr roT said...

two?

9/11/2008 6:29 PM

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