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  1. The Higgs Field and Higgs Boson are theorized to be responsible for mass, or $m$. If these could be manipulated, altered, or controlled for, if the Higgs Field could somehow be parted, would this result in $m=0$ in all physics equations?

  2. Since the units of $c$ are just time and distance, would $c$ be affected?

This is NOT asking about redefining and applying the standard model universally, this is about a specific localized instance. The standard model with non-zero Higgs VEV still applies universally, so discussion of global effects is not relevant. This is a 'bubble', if you will, where there is a 'wave' (for a real groaner, a 'disturbance') in the Higgs field, such that the Higgs boson inside does not interact with the Higgs field outside. The field is manipulated, NOT made zero.

The Alcubierre drive has been accepted as theoretically plausible, this is related. Would the Higgs field be enclosed in this space-time bubble, or would it remain outside?

Yes, this would seem to break Lorentz symmetry, but the same rules would apply inside as outside, it's just that the outside is not the inside. That is, the Higgs field inside appears to move through the Higgs filed outside. Thus, m inside the bubble would appear to be zero from outside.

Qmechanic
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Justin Thyme
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  • I don't think this is a bad question, or that it deserves closing. After all, the answer is more or less "yes", so OP is not way off base. – Javier Aug 31 '17 at 20:53
  • -1. Hypothetical questions which ask "What would happen if we changed the laws of nature?" are not part of mainstream physics. – sammy gerbil Aug 31 '17 at 23:13
  • @Javier The strength of this community is that we can agree to disagree, and that it takes 5 votes to close a question. – ZeroTheHero Aug 31 '17 at 23:26
  • You may be interested in this blog post: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/the-known-apparently-elementary-particles/the-known-particles-if-the-higgs-field-were-zero/ – Rococo Sep 01 '17 at 04:50
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    Possible duplicate of What happens to matter in a standard model with zero Higgs VEV? – Rococo Sep 01 '17 at 04:54
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    As an aside, while I do think that this is probably a duplicate of the above question or other similar ones (albeit at a lower technical level), it is unfortunate otherwise that a question that in the past got many upvotes and thoughtful responses is now being met with complaints that it doesn't belong on this site. – Rococo Sep 01 '17 at 04:57
  • @Rococo, exactly why do questions have to be asked in a highly technical fashion? Professor Higgs himself came to the conclusion about the existence of the Higgs field from a very simplistic thought. Likewise, Einstein developed his theories based on a very simplistic, jargon-free mind experiment. Planck came up with the idea of the Planck constant similarly. The biggest advances in physics stem from the simplest questions. Sometimes too much jargon makes it hard to see the trees from the forest. – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 15:06
  • In other words, areas of physics where the members have some reasonable expertise, and are able to follow the discussion themselves? Sure glad I left Schrodinger's cat out of it. – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 17:40
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    You misunderstand. I was defending you, and the validity of this question. (I don't think I agree that "Higgs himself came to the conclusion about the existence of the Higgs field from a very simplistic thought", but that is neither here nor there). – Rococo Sep 01 '17 at 21:47
  • @Rococo '...idea put forward by Higgs. Don’t shove the particles’ masses down the throat of the beautiful equations. Instead, keep the equations pristine and symmetric, but consider them operating within a peculiar environment. Imagine that all of space is uniformly filled with an invisible substance... Push on a fundamental particle in an effort to increase its speed and ... you would feel this drag force as a resistance. Justifiably, you would interpret the resistance as the particle’s mass.' link – Justin Thyme Sep 02 '17 at 04:07
  • ctd For Higgs, it started as a thought experiment. His first paper was rejected as claptrot hypothetical, science fiction. Neither was I attacking you. But 'at a lower technical level' does imply that the question is not 'physicsy' enough. Higgs revised his paper and re-submitted it, full of jargon I am told, and it was accepted. Same idea. just hyped up with verbose baffledegab terminology. Big words look impressive, even if they don't really add any meaning. Rather than admit they don't understand the fancy wording, they just accept it as meaningful. It LOOKS intelligent, therefore it is. – Justin Thyme Sep 02 '17 at 04:21

2 Answers2

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If in theory you could change the Higgs potential so the vacuum expectation value of the Highs field became zero, some elementary particles would become massless but hadrons would not (almost all their mass is due to the color force). This would prevent atomic electrons (the Dirac equation gives the electron's energy in hydrogen as this, which becomes $0$ for all quantum numbers in the massless limit), but $c$ would be unchanged.

J.G.
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I am replying at the level of a highschool student.

I will use your last comment:

The fact that c is the speed of SOMETHING is derived from working through the basic units of the equation e=mc^2, until you are left with c being distance over time, once all the other units are cancelled out.

This is a complicated way of looking at a dated equation, which is no longer used in particle physics since it is not a fundamental property but result of the mathematics. Fundamental are the four vectors in the pseudoeuclidean space of special relativity, space and time and energy and momentum. The inertial form can be derived from these simple assumptions

That is speed, but does it HAVE to be the speed of light? That it is the same value as the speed of light in a vacuum could be just an artifact.

The speed calculated from E=mc^2 is for an effective inertial mass of a massive macroscopic body. It is useful to show how a massive body behaves under large accelerations, but irrelevant for basic physics. The speed of light in vacuum is an axiom of special relativity, and special relativity has been validated innumerable times in nuclear and particle physics.

Does the Higgs field have a 'speed', or is it absolutely stationary?

Fields are mathematical constructs that fill up all space, all the elementary particles have a field over all space. A photon field, a neutrino field etc are hypothesized mathematically over all space. It is the creation and annihilation operators acting on these fields that have measurable meaning. Higgs bosons appear with the creation operators on the Higgs field. Fields are stationary by construction, like extra coordinate systems.

If there were no Higgs boson, EVERYTHING would travel at the speed of c.

If there were no Higgs boson a new theory would be needed. The fact that the Higgs boson has been found at LHC is a validation of the present standard model of particle physics.

At the universe at present the Higgs field gives mass only to the elementary particles of the table. The atoms and molecules we observe would still have an invariant mass due to the strong force in the nucleus and the rules of special relativity. Whether bound states would form is a moot question.

The only laboratory we have is the cosmological history of the universe, where due to the recovery of the symmetry, which is broken at the low energies we live in, the elementary particles have zero mass up to ~10^-12 seconds after the big bang. The particles bouncing around there still have invariant masses when in pairs and systems.

To answer your question, no the Higgs field cannot be manipulated in our present universe, and it certainly has nothing to do with the speed of light. In this sense the symbol "m" is miss used in E=mc^2, it is a variable, it is just a mathematical result of the special relativity equations, which do assign an invariant mass to each four vector and thus to each particle.

anna v
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  • But the other fields are not equal throughout space. Apparently, only the Higgs field is homologous. Does it HAVE to be? Gravity has a 'speed', but it also has waves. Yet it is also a 'gravitational field'. ALL post-Einstein (actually, post-Planck physics - Einstein and Planck were very close associates, Einstein just got the better press) is just a construct, but the most widely-held construct. e = mc^2 is what started it all. Are you saying the c in this equation is NOT the c widely used? Are you saying the equation is no longer valid, just because it is no longer used? – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 15:24
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    The photon, electron higgs fields are quantum field theory fields,not classical(general relativity or newtonian gravity or classical electromagnetism). At present, we are at low energy and the Higgs field has undergone the symmetry breaking and its vacuum expectation value is over 200 GeV, whereas all the other fields of the particle table have zero VEV. c is the c widely used, it is m that is a variable coming from the equations of special relativity. now one uses invariant mass, a fixed for a four vector, not relativistic mass because it is a function. You have to look at the links. – anna v Sep 01 '17 at 17:08
  • So what is the answer - is it theoretically possible to envision a condition where a body could be put into a scenario where it is not influenced by an external Higgs field, like a bubble, so that externally the body does not appear to have a mass, but internally it does? The links all pertain to the standard model globally, not the standard model under manipulation, along the lines of the Alcubierre drive? My question about c is that it has the units distance/time, but just by itself, these units have zero value. If they remain zero in any equation do they take on a value in c? – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 17:33
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    The answer is no. The standard model is local, at all x,y,z,t. it cannot be manipulated except by interactions that are within the standard model. The Higgs field at our energies cannot have a zero VEV. all the rest is science fiction , not science – anna v Sep 01 '17 at 18:03
  • so how does the Alcubierre drive get away with it? There seems to be a different model that allows it but not this. – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 18:17
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    This is a classical general relativity concept and has nothing to do with quantization, as general relativity is not yet quantized and it is not possible to guess if this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive speculation would work. Higgs fields are in the quantum mechanical frame. – anna v Sep 01 '17 at 18:20
  • You do realize that your answer looks exactly like rationalization? – Justin Thyme Sep 01 '17 at 18:23
  • Physics mathematical models are about rationalization, from a few postulates/principles/laws and the use of rigorous mathematics a predictive model of observbables is constructed. The drive is science fiction until it is rigorously demonstrated that in the quantum frame the A lc..metric is valid. If it is valid , one can speculate about Casimir effects. If a mechanism using the HIggs field can be demonstrated , it would still be impossible to build the drive due the the large vacuum expectation value of the field at our energies, and the enormous fuelexpenditure to reach them. – anna v Sep 02 '17 at 04:15