Fields, Particle in particular the Higgs Field


BaalChatzaf

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Here is an hour lecture by Sean Carrol who is not only a first rate physicist but one of the best expositors and presenters of physics to non-physicists.

He make an important point. What is real in the Universe is fields. Particle are just the vibrations and dimples in the fields.

Please go to:

At about 53:30 He says: We want supersymmetry to exist, but Nature does not care what we want"

My man!

Ba'al Chatzaf

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  • 10 months later...

Ba'al,

I'll watch the presentation to see the context of his symmetry remark. But for now:

No, mankind didn't want symmetry, Emmy Noether did.

Michael,

''Field" simply describes the mathematical nature of the equations.used. This is necessary because 'particles' are said to exist anywhere within the field.

Eva

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Michael,

No, the field is real because it can be 'observed' as an 'effect'. We then iterate back and infer what are the specifics (mass, spin,speed) of a particle that might cause the energy that creates the 'wave' that can be expressed as a field.

What's important to note is that the particle isn't 'real' to the extent that it cannot be observed.

Forty years ago, both this non-observation of said particle and the expression of probability that the particle could be anywhere within the field caused philosophical concern: 'fiction', illusion', etc..... Well, that was long before my time--as I'm 20!

Even though , as Feynman said, "If you say that you understand QM, then you're lying", the bigger picture is that we obtain fantastic measurement. So go withthe flow!

Eva

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"The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real... a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have." - Richard Feynman (link).

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Ba'al,

I'll watch the presentation to see the context of his symmetry remark. But for now:

No, mankind didn't want symmetry, Emmy Noether did.

Michael,

''Field" simply describes the mathematical nature of the equations.used. This is necessary because 'particles' are said to exist anywhere within the field.

Eva

Emmy explained why conservation laws conserve. Her theorem matching symmetries to conservation laws is one of the masterpieces of mathematical physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Michael,

No, in my own field of Psychology (my 'major', really!) people not only don't understand cause, but also argue over effects.

A classical example of this is 'self-esteem': always good, or a happy medium?

The interesting point of QM is that the results are undisputed, yet no real understanding of the how's. So sure, one is 'allowed' to say that they 'understand' QM. So explain away! Scienceworld awaits with bated breath!

Do fields cause particles? Uhhh....the question is 'way over my head.

Eva

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Do fields cause particles? Uhhh....the question is 'way over my head.

Eva,

Man, this is hard to try to get across to academic-like people. Especially when they start looking down their noses...

:smile:

Ah... the vanity of the academic...

I have been an addict of several enslaving substances (alcohol, crack, etc.), but I never tasted that particular fruit.

I wonder if the craving gets just as bad when you go without a fix for too long...

:smile:

The question is not whether fields cause particles. That's a reductionist approach where everything ultimately has to go to one cause only. Or, since I've seen reductionists deny that--not because it is incorrect, but because science has not gotten that far yet--it's the general direction .

The question is do fields cause particles to act and react in certain ways that are otherwise not innate to them? Or better, do fields use what is innate in them in a structured manner that is not innate in them?

I use the metaphor of top down and bottom up thinking. The reductionist believes that the subparticle contains all the forms and fields in the universe--that they emerge from subparticles. The top down only person (usually a religious person, but not always) believes form and field merge and become so all-encompassing that they call it God (or "source") and claim it is the cause of everything, including the subparticles.

In my way of thinking there are both. And I don't know where either came from. I don't understand having a top without a bottom. One does not necessarily cause the other (maybe some do, but not all). But, from what I have been able to see so far, one does not exist without the other.

I've heard and read a lot of blah blah blah about the reductionist approach being the only truly scientific one, but when I get down to the first principles, that's an opinion. Nothing more.

So I look at it like a child would. I see a field. I see stuff in it.

Hey!

Both field and stuff exist and they're different!

:smile:

Opinion? Yup.

But taking one opinion over the other, I'll go with the one that makes sense to me.

Michael

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Ba'al,,

Also, please don't forget that the symmetries of physics are made possible by her working of Group Theory (Gallois>Abel>Lie) into Thermodynamics....

Good point. She was David Hilbert's auxillary brain. Hilbert recognized Noether as the genuine intellectual treasure she was.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Do fields cause particles? Uhhh....the question is 'way over my head.

Eva,

Man, this is hard to try to get across to academic-like people. Especially when they start looking down their noses...

:smile:

Ah... the vanity of the academic...

I have been an addict of several enslaving substances (alcohol, crack, etc.), but I never tasted that particular fruit.

I wonder if the craving gets just as bad when you go without a fix for too long...

:smile:

The question is not whether fields cause particles. That's a reductionist approach where everything ultimately has to go to one cause only. Or, since I've seen reductionists deny that--not because it is incorrect, but because science has not gotten that far yet--it's the general direction .

The question is do fields cause particles to act and react in certain ways that are otherwise not innate to them? Or better, do fields use what is innate in them in a structured manner that is not innate in them?

I use the metaphor of top down and bottom up thinking. The reductionist believes that the subparticle contains all the forms and fields in the universe--that they emerge from subparticles. The top down only person (usually a religious person, but not always) believes form and field merge and become so all-encompassing that they call it God (or "source") and claim it is the cause of everything, including the subparticles.

In my way of thinking there are both. And I don't know where either came from. I don't understand having a top without a bottom. One does not necessarily cause the other (maybe some do, but not all). But, from what I have been able to see so far, one does not exist without the other.

I've heard and read a lot of blah blah blah about the reductionist approach being the only truly scientific one, but when I get down to the first principles, that's an opinion. Nothing more.

So I look at it like a child would. I see a field. I see stuff in it.

Hey!

Both field and stuff exist and they're different!

:smile:

Opinion? Yup.

But taking one opinion over the other, I'll go with the one that makes sense to me.

Michael

Michael,

In some versions of string theory, field is caused by the vibration of said strings. Having said this, I'm being neither 'academic nor snooty. This is simlpy all I know in this particular.

<<The question is do fields cause particles to act and react in certain ways that are otherwise not innate to them>>

Yes, although 'innate' seem to be an awkward term. Lamb shifts describe the field influence of the nucleon on the electron. To this extent (1952) Feynman called it the 'holy grail', as it opened the door to Quantum Electrodynamics, or precisely the study of fiels interacction on subatomics.

Moreover... The Dirac equation of around 1930 describes how the Lorentz (Relativity) also effects the electron. .

>>>The reductionist believes that the subparticle contains all the forms and fields in the universe--that they emerge from subparticles. The top down only person (usually a religious person, but not always) believes form and field merge and become so all-encompassing that they call it God (or "source") and claim it is the cause of everything, including the subparticles.>>>

I'm not comfortable with either. They're clearly a number of subs (16 plus Higgs,at last count!) that may or may not 'fit' into a singular elaborate geometric equation. For some fun reading, see Garrett Lisi and the Lie 8.

Eva

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I'm not comfortable with either.

Eva,

You mean like there's fundamental stuff we might not know yet?

I'm cool with that.

I have speculated before that humans are still evolving and it would be a huge conceit--nothing more than vanity based on whimsy--that somehow the human species stopped evolving with us, meaning that that all there is to the universe is already available to the 5 senses and consciousness and nothing else could possibly exist.

To use a simple example, light does not exist for a living organism that has no eyes. But that does not mean light does not exist at all.

So I share your discomfort, maybe not in the same manner you do, but I think open is a lot better than closed when addressing the unknown to try to identify it.

Michael

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Merlin,

How about here?

Blind animals

Wikipedia, I know, but the idea is not bonkers. It's kinda part of human knowledge already even to the point of being in the mainstream.

Besides, I just learned a new word: troglobite. An animal that only lives in a dark, lightless cave.

The metaphor possibilities are blinding me!

Plato's cave anyone?

(spooky music, thunder, dogs barking in the distance) The first light you get is for shadows, Troglobite!...

:smile:

Michael

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To use a simple example, light does not exist for a living organism that has no eyes. But that does not mean light does not exist at all.

Light, in its most general sense, means electromagnetic radiation, not (human) visible-light. Human visible light occupies a miniscule part of the spectrum between 400 and 700 Angstroms wave length. Even blind bats need the warmth of the Sun (infra red radiation) to say alive.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Why does chlorophyll hate green?

Is the secret to photosynthesis to filter out ( in) all solar radiation ,except the part of the spectrum that produces the visible green?

The Sun's energy is greatest in the green part of the spectrum. That is the frequency at which the Solar Black Body curve peaks.

Chlorophyll is a wonderful example of adaptation.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm not comfortable with either.

Eva,

You mean like there's fundamental stuff we might not know yet?

I'm cool with that.

I have speculated before that humans are still evolving and it would be a huge conceit--nothing more than vanity based on whimsy--that somehow the human species stopped evolving with us, meaning that that all there is to the universe is already available to the 5 senses and consciousness and nothing else could possibly exist.

To use a simple example, light does not exist for a living organism that has no eyes. But that does not mean light does not exist at all.

So I share your discomfort, maybe not in the same manner you do, but I think open is a lot better than closed when addressing the unknown to try to identify it.

Michael

I hasten to add that my 'discomfort' is with the math, not the metaphysics. On the one hand, there's no question that an assortment of elementary particles is the basis of everything; what's missing is an overlaying theorem that would put them together.

What we do know is that 93% of the universe is missing in the forms of dark matter and energy.

EM

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What we do know is that 93% of the universe is missing in the forms of dark matter and energy.

EM

We shall have to work harder to find them.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob,

I have heard it said that dark matter and dark energy are fictions made up by agenda-laden scientists to make their previous math work with inconvenient observations.

They get sloppy too, talking about the "form" of dark matter and dark energy, which are supposed to be form suckers (if the math is to be believed). :smile:

Michael

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Eva,

Heh.

Field is nothing but an illusion?

Or better, fiction?

Sounds real scientific.

I think I understand...

:smile:

Michael

A field is just an assignment of a quantity to every point in space-time. It's a technical way of describing the "stuff" that the laws of physics act on.

Sometimes these quantities are just ordinary numbers, like in scalar fields. Or they can be vectors, like in vector fields. In General Relativity, space-time and matter are both described in terms of tensor fields. And if you want to know why nobody understands Quantum Mechanics, it's because quantum mechanical fields are really fucking abstract. A quantum mechanical system that only has pure states is described by an infinite-dimensional complex vector at each point in space-time.

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