Speaker 1: I have a really deep question for you, or a
Speaker 1: one that's really been puzzling me. Oh, but we're jumping
Speaker 1: right into the hard stuff. I don't know. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: gonna think it's easy. Really a cartoon is let's find out.
Speaker 1: So we just came off of the holiday season. Lots
Speaker 1: of people got lots of presents. Yeah. Yeah, And in
Speaker 1: American Christmas, at least, the traditional story is that Santa
Speaker 1: Claus brings all those kids presents. You're not gonna ask
Speaker 1: me about the physics of flying reindeer, are you? No? No, No,
Speaker 1: My question is more philosophical. It's does Santa also get presents?
Speaker 1: Who is Santa's Santa? WHOA that's meta, dude. And if
Speaker 1: Santa has a Santa, who is there Santa Santa Santa
Speaker 1: Santa Santa has a Grand Santa and a great grand Santa.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think you want to go
Speaker 1: too far into the Santa verse. You just accept your presence, Daniel,
Speaker 1: Thanks Santa. I hope these cookies are enough for you.
Speaker 1: Hi am or handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.
Speaker 1: Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicist and a
Speaker 1: professor at U c Irvine and I have sometimes played Santa,
Speaker 1: Oh really in like a theater production, in a movie.
Speaker 1: No No. In the eating Cookies Late at Night version
Speaker 1: of Santa, you don't even leave presents. You just go
Speaker 1: and eat the cookies. You try to teach your kids
Speaker 1: a valuable lesson about leaving food out. We're all about delegation.
Speaker 1: My wife handles the presence, I handle the cookies. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a marriage that seems like a raw deal for
Speaker 1: one of you. We're a half big deal depending on
Speaker 1: the cookies. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: which we share the treats of the universe with you.
Speaker 1: We don't gobble up all the cookies of understanding. We
Speaker 1: break them into pieces and pass them around to all
Speaker 1: of humanity. We think it's important that everybody gets to
Speaker 1: taste the sweetness that is the understanding of how the
Speaker 1: universe works. Because this incredible, far flung universe is majestic,
Speaker 1: is bonkers. Is difficult to understand, but it's definitely worth
Speaker 1: digging into. Yeah, because we hope that every episode you
Speaker 1: listen to is a little bit like Christmas where you
Speaker 1: click on the episode and you open up an incredible
Speaker 1: and amazing gift of truth about the universe and how
Speaker 1: it works, and hopefully you won't return it. Hopefully you
Speaker 1: didn't get two or three of these for Christmas, but
Speaker 1: you can regifted. You know, we give the gift that
Speaker 1: just can be infinitely regifted. I guess that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it is a goal of physics to unwrap the
Speaker 1: mysteries of the universe, to peel back layers and layers
Speaker 1: of wrapping paper, and to finally, maybe one day, reveal
Speaker 1: what is going on underneath. Yeah, because sometimes I think Daniel,
Speaker 1: you talk about the days when they reveal big discoveries
Speaker 1: in the media, you call that kind of like a
Speaker 1: Christmas for physicists. Yeah, it is really exciting, and that's
Speaker 1: what we live for. You know, it's not that often
Speaker 1: in physics that you actually make a really big discovery
Speaker 1: a day when you get to ask Nature a question
Speaker 1: and you've forced it because of the ingenuity of your
Speaker 1: experiments to reveal something to you. These days come, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes ten twenty years apart. Yeah, And I guess the
Speaker 1: problem is if it's a discovery by one of these
Speaker 1: huge collaborations with like a thousand people, do you then
Speaker 1: have to leave a thousand cookies and milk classes out
Speaker 1: for them? You know, a big collaboration of physicist doesn't
Speaker 1: run on empty stomach. So yeah, the cookie budget is
Speaker 1: pretty serious, right, except then also it's coffee not milk.
Speaker 1: I guess it's expresses depending on where you are in
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, And there was a particularly interesting and
Speaker 1: fun discovery announcement, and back in twelve that was a
Speaker 1: big deal. It was like a mega Christmas almost in
Speaker 1: the particle physics world. It was. And you know how
Speaker 1: you anticipate Christmas, You start thinking about it in the fall,
Speaker 1: and then as December comes it gets more and more exciting,
Speaker 1: and then the night before Christmas you're just going absolutely
Speaker 1: bonkers wondering what you're gonna get under the tree. Well,
Speaker 1: for us, the discovery the Higgs boson was like that,
Speaker 1: except over fifty years, fifty years between the prediction that
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson was a thing and the day we
Speaker 1: could say it is a thing, it is real, It's
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. Oh Man, actually did that
Speaker 1: with my kids. It's like the next Christmas is fifty
Speaker 1: years from now. That's when you get your presents. They're
Speaker 1: going to give you fifty times long a list then, right,
Speaker 1: but then they have to be good for fifty years.
Speaker 1: That might be worth it. It might be where that
Speaker 1: you're definitely not screwing up their childhood death. Well, I am,
Speaker 1: but it's just a matter of how, of course. But
Speaker 1: it was a pretty big discovery, the discovery of the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, or I guess not the discovery, but the
Speaker 1: confirmation that it exists, right that the same thing. No,
Speaker 1: I think it was a discovery. We didn't know for
Speaker 1: sure that the Higgs was real before we thought there
Speaker 1: was a great idea. It was a beautiful and brilliant
Speaker 1: idea to bring together all these various pieces and explain
Speaker 1: them in terms of the Higgs boson. It really pulled
Speaker 1: everything together in an elegant way. But we weren't sure.
Speaker 1: It could have been wrong. And that's why we experiments, right,
Speaker 1: because we don't just sit in the back of a
Speaker 1: cave and think about how the universe might be. We
Speaker 1: actually go out there and try to discover it and
Speaker 1: force it to reveal the truth to us. That's what
Speaker 1: science is all about, is doing experiments to confirm our understanding.
Speaker 1: So I would definitely call it a discovery, right, right,
Speaker 1: But and you mean metaphorically, you don't go out of
Speaker 1: the cave because the large Hattern collider isn't a cave technically, right,
Speaker 1: It's true. I guess we don't go out of the cave.
Speaker 1: We do the experiments in the cave. We bring the
Speaker 1: world into the cave. Screw you, Plato. You build all
Speaker 1: the equipment inside, kind of like the bat cave. So
Speaker 1: you and Batman are right up there. That's right, we're
Speaker 1: reading a new chapter to Plato's allegory. But it was
Speaker 1: a pretty big discovery, right, the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: It sort of completed what's known as the standard model. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Without that piece, we really didn't understand some basic things
Speaker 1: about the particles and how it all whiz through the universe.
Speaker 1: We didn't understand why the W and the Z bosons
Speaker 1: for the weak force were so heavy whereas the photon
Speaker 1: was so light. We didn't understand where the other particles,
Speaker 1: how they got their mass. It was a big puzzle.
Speaker 1: And so now that we know the Higgs is real
Speaker 1: and we know something about how that happens. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: The idea is that the Higgs boson and the Higgs
Speaker 1: field is what gives other particles their inertial mass. Right,
Speaker 1: We've just talked about this in a recent podcast. We
Speaker 1: talked about this in lots of podcasts. Absolutely, the Higgs
Speaker 1: is the reason that particles are not massless. The electron
Speaker 1: and the corks and lots of these other particles have
Speaker 1: some massive changes how they move through the universe, and
Speaker 1: that's because of the way they interact with the Higgs field. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the Higgs is sort of like the you know,
Speaker 1: the host of the Christmas party making sure everyone gets
Speaker 1: enough mass, eat, eat exactly. But then I guess that
Speaker 1: raises the question, what about the Higgs itself? Who is
Speaker 1: making sure the host's plate is also full of cookies? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Today on the program, we'll be asking the question where
Speaker 1: does the Higgs boson get its mass? WHOA, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty meta question if you're if you're familiar with particle physics. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like does Santa give himself presence? Does he get
Speaker 1: presents from somebody else? Either way, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: I would think it was Mrs Santa who gets Santa presents? Right,
Speaker 1: all right, and so then Santa gets her presence. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Santas are their own Santas. Do They whisper thank
Speaker 1: you Santa to each other on Christmas Morning? They write
Speaker 1: Dear Santa letters to themselves. Every time they write an
Speaker 1: email to each other or send a text message, they're
Speaker 1: literally writing to Santa. Yeah. But then I would say,
Speaker 1: Mrs Santa, she's the super Santa because she's Santa Santa, right,
Speaker 1: Like everybody else gets their presence from Santa, and Santa
Speaker 1: gets his presence from Mrs Santa. And she's sort of
Speaker 1: like at the top of the pyramid. See you're saying
Speaker 1: Santa is just like the Wizard of Boss. It's just
Speaker 1: the front man exactly. He's the front man. Really, it's
Speaker 1: Mrs Santa pulling the strings behind the curtain. She is
Speaker 1: the supervillain, the final boss. If you want to get
Speaker 1: your presence, I mean, you know, but yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty deep question, I guess. You know. We talked about
Speaker 1: all the time how the Higgs boson gives mass to
Speaker 1: the other particles. You know, when you interact with the
Speaker 1: Higgs field that when you feel yourself heavy or or
Speaker 1: inert and the Higgs boson is sort of how you
Speaker 1: interact with the Higgs field. But then the Higgs I
Speaker 1: guess particle itself has mass. Also, the Higgs particle definitely
Speaker 1: has mass. And one of the big experimental challenges for
Speaker 1: us before we discovered it was that we didn't know
Speaker 1: how much mass it had. If it had had more
Speaker 1: mass than it does, it would have been much harder
Speaker 1: to find. And if it had had less mass, we
Speaker 1: would have found it years ago. And as it changes
Speaker 1: its mass, it looks different in the universe, and so
Speaker 1: we had to look for lots of different kinds of
Speaker 1: Higgs is at the same time because we didn't know
Speaker 1: which one our universe had. Wow, well, it is a
Speaker 1: pretty meta and a little bit mind bending question. It
Speaker 1: kind of gives me a headache to think about a
Speaker 1: little bit. And so we were wondering, as usual, how
Speaker 1: many people out there have thought about this question, this
Speaker 1: sort of recursive question, And so Daniel went out there
Speaker 1: into the internet as usual to ask people where does
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson get its mass? And so, if you're
Speaker 1: sitting at home and you like to play along this
Speaker 1: part of the podcast, wondering if you know the answers
Speaker 1: to this question. Then I do you you to send in
Speaker 1: your answers If you'd like to get some headache making
Speaker 1: questions in your inbox, just right to us two questions
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com and you'll send them
Speaker 1: all on Christmas, right, that's right. I'm the Mrs Santa
Speaker 1: of physics. Well, here's what people had to say. The
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to mind is the Higgs field.
Speaker 1: But given that the Higgs Boson is a we go
Speaker 1: in that field itself, I don't know if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense. M Probably the Higgs bosom get its mass
Speaker 1: from itself, because I know it gives mass to other particles.
Speaker 1: The Higgs boson definitely gets its mass from its local church.
Speaker 1: I cannot point a finger to a place Higgs field
Speaker 1: gives mass, but Higgs boson when he gets his mass,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I believe that it is a field
Speaker 1: as well as a particle, and I know that it
Speaker 1: imparts mass to other particles. But as far as where
Speaker 1: it gets its mass, I would say maybe the field
Speaker 1: around it. I don't know. But from the chatter I
Speaker 1: hear from scientists and shows such as yours, I get
Speaker 1: the idea that too, a three D being such as ourselves.
Speaker 1: It would seem as if that mass is coming from
Speaker 1: somewhere else in space. That's the best I can do
Speaker 1: for you. So I think Higgs boson would get its
Speaker 1: mass from dark matter. I think the Higgs boson might
Speaker 1: be massless. It's a boson like the photon or gluon
Speaker 1: or graviton or w or z the boson. I think
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't have mass itself, but if you excited field,
Speaker 1: it will decay into stuff that does have mass. I
Speaker 1: thought it was like mess. Doesn't it give the mess
Speaker 1: to other things? So where does it get it? Maybe
Speaker 1: space hamsters, space hamsters. That's a great answer. Space hamsters
Speaker 1: is a great answer for any question. Really, what would
Speaker 1: you like for lunch today? Or have you been good
Speaker 1: this year? Space hamsters? That's all I have to say.
Speaker 1: Who made this mess in the kitchen? Yeah, so a
Speaker 1: pretty wide range of answers here, mostly questions themselves. Everyone's
Speaker 1: like what what? Yeah? I think this made people realize
Speaker 1: that there was maybe an angle to this question. They
Speaker 1: maybe hadn't considered it before. That's why I thought this
Speaker 1: would be really fun to talk about. Like the person
Speaker 1: who said the Higgs boson gets its mass from its
Speaker 1: local church, Like does the Higgs Boson go to mess
Speaker 1: it is called the God Particles? Maybe it is the
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson Church. Yeah, and you know St Peter Higgs
Speaker 1: of course discovered it, and so it all hangs together.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a St. Peter in the Church of
Speaker 1: Biggs Bosoni. Yeah, and you know, the name the God
Speaker 1: Particle just comes from that book by Leon Laterman a
Speaker 1: couple of decades ago. Nobody in the field ever calls
Speaker 1: it the God particle. We just roll our eyes when
Speaker 1: we hear that. You grown every time I mentioned it
Speaker 1: on the podcast, mostly out of jealousy because his book
Speaker 1: sold so many copies. Well, that's your problem. We should
Speaker 1: name our books. Um, I don't know, the Devil particle
Speaker 1: the devil. Oh, yeah, there you go. You know, I
Speaker 1: was looking at the list of science podcasts recently and
Speaker 1: noticed that we're up there on the list, but we're
Speaker 1: well behind several other science podcasts, including The Bigfoot Chronicles
Speaker 1: and The Paranormal. And in the list of science podcasts,
Speaker 1: they're mostly about the supernatural. Whoa, yeah, I noticed that
Speaker 1: as well. It's it's a little um makes me wonder
Speaker 1: how they categorize these things. Yeah, or maybe we should
Speaker 1: pivot and our podcast should be about like you know,
Speaker 1: quantum big foot, yeah, or the electron lockns mon monsters.
Speaker 1: Or maybe we should just double down and go for
Speaker 1: like supernatural big combined at all, you know, oh interesting,
Speaker 1: Or we could just talk about things that bend reality
Speaker 1: and seemed supernatural themselves, like particle physics. Yeah, exactly, the
Speaker 1: universe is bonkers enough. We don't need to add alien
Speaker 1: bigfoot that built the pyramids. No, we don't, but they
Speaker 1: would make it a little bit more interesting. For sure,
Speaker 1: we might get more listeners. But yeah, we're asking the
Speaker 1: question what gives the Higgs boson itself? It's mass, because
Speaker 1: we know the Higgs boson gives other particles mass, and
Speaker 1: so where does it get its mass? And so you
Speaker 1: talked about that it does have mass, meaning Daniel, the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, I guess, is heavy like it it doesn't
Speaker 1: move at the speed of light. That's right. The Higgs
Speaker 1: boson cannot move at the speed of light because it
Speaker 1: has mass, and nothing that has mass can move at
Speaker 1: the speed of light, and everything that doesn't have mass
Speaker 1: always moves at the speed of light. So the Higgs
Speaker 1: has a hundred and twenty five gigga electron volts of mass.
Speaker 1: That's a unit where one gig electron volts is about
Speaker 1: the mass of a proton, So the Higgs is about
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five protons worth of mass. WOA.
Speaker 1: But I guess you know, if the Higgs boson can
Speaker 1: move at the speed of light, and that's the particle
Speaker 1: that gives other particles mass, does that mean that my
Speaker 1: mask there's like a delay to my mask. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like I have mass when the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson gets to me. Well, information does propagate through
Speaker 1: the Higgs field at the speed of light, so you
Speaker 1: can have wiggles in the Higgs field that move at
Speaker 1: the speed of light, because not every wiggle in the
Speaker 1: Higgs field is a Higgs boson, but the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: particle itself doesn't travel at the speed of light. So
Speaker 1: if you made a Higgs boson and you threw it
Speaker 1: to me, it would be outraced by a photon. But
Speaker 1: for example, if the Higgs field collapsed because it's some
Speaker 1: crazy experiment you were doing over there in your basement,
Speaker 1: then the collapse of the Higgs field would move at
Speaker 1: the speed of light. M I see, all right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know, the idea that it gives me
Speaker 1: mass is mostly about me interacting with the Higgs field,
Speaker 1: not necessarily with the Higgs boson. Right, Like, when I'm
Speaker 1: moving through space, I'm not getting bombarded by Higgs bosons.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of moving through this molasses field. But
Speaker 1: if I wiggle the molasses, then that creates a Higgs boson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a bit of a fine point there,
Speaker 1: depends on whether you like to think about fields or
Speaker 1: you'd like to think about particles. I like to think
Speaker 1: about fields, that the fundamental thing in space is all
Speaker 1: these quantum fields, and a particle is like a special
Speaker 1: excited configuration of those fields. There are people out there
Speaker 1: that like to think about everything in terms of particles.
Speaker 1: Particles are the real thing, and fields are just like
Speaker 1: a mathematical construct, and instead of fields, they think about
Speaker 1: virtual particles. That everything we would call a wiggle in
Speaker 1: the field is just a bunch of virtual Higgs bosons.
Speaker 1: So you can think about it in both ways. Both
Speaker 1: pictures are mathematically accurate. I think it's clear to think
Speaker 1: about the field as the basic element of the universe right, right,
Speaker 1: And the Higgs boson gives particles mass but not all
Speaker 1: of its mass, right, Like, it only gives particles one
Speaker 1: type of mass, that's right. And so you mentioned something earlier,
Speaker 1: inertial mass. There's really a couple of ways we talk
Speaker 1: about mass. One is gravitational mass, and that's like, if
Speaker 1: you have mass, then you bend space and you can
Speaker 1: create gravity and all that kind of stuff. That's one
Speaker 1: concept of mass. We're talking about something else today. We're
Speaker 1: talking about inertial mass. That's like the mass in F
Speaker 1: equals m A. Right, F equals m A tells us
Speaker 1: that if you want to accelerate something, that's the A.
Speaker 1: You've got to give it a force, you've got to
Speaker 1: push it. That's the F and mass is the relationship
Speaker 1: between that. If you want to give something a big acceleration,
Speaker 1: you have to give it a big force. But if
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of mass, it's going to require
Speaker 1: even more force to get a big acceleration. So it's
Speaker 1: that mass the M and F equals m A that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. We're talking about how an object moves
Speaker 1: when you push it, Does it accelerate a lot or
Speaker 1: does it accelerate a little. Right, it's the masses in
Speaker 1: like how hard it is to move it from here
Speaker 1: to there. Because there are there are other kinds of masses, right,
Speaker 1: there's gravitational mass, which is sort of like how you
Speaker 1: get attracted to other massive things. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: really about how something moves, how hard it is to
Speaker 1: push it or how hard it is to slow it down. Right,
Speaker 1: this concept of inertia, that's what we call it inertial mass.
Speaker 1: And it's helpful, I think, to spend a minute thinking
Speaker 1: about what that really means. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: what it's like to move some thing through space, or
Speaker 1: to speed it up or to slow it down. Any
Speaker 1: property of an object that changes how easy it is
Speaker 1: to speed it up or how easy it is to
Speaker 1: slow it down changes its inertia. And so we call
Speaker 1: that a change in mass. And so that's really what
Speaker 1: mass is, is a combination of everything that makes it
Speaker 1: easier or harder for that object to move, to get
Speaker 1: sped up or to get slowed down. Right. And and
Speaker 1: if you're just sort of a regular particle run of
Speaker 1: the male particle, the reason you're hard to move from
Speaker 1: here there is because of the Higgs field exactly. So
Speaker 1: if it was no Higgs field in the universe, the
Speaker 1: electron would have no mass. It would act like a photon.
Speaker 1: But because the Higgs field is there, the electron is
Speaker 1: interacting with the Higgs field, like the Higgs field is
Speaker 1: changing the way the electron moves, and it changes the
Speaker 1: way the electron moves in exactly the same way as
Speaker 1: if the electron actually had its own mass. There's no
Speaker 1: difference mathematically. That was really the genius of the Higgs
Speaker 1: mechanism is to come up with this other way for
Speaker 1: a particle to effectively get mass. That's why we call
Speaker 1: it like the Higgs boson gives it mass, where the
Speaker 1: electrons and get mask because it's this interaction that changes
Speaker 1: the way the electron moves in exactly the same way
Speaker 1: as if the electron sort of inherently had a pure
Speaker 1: mass to itself. You're saying, like if it inherently was
Speaker 1: hard to move, Like if the universe worked in that
Speaker 1: way where things are hard to move if they have
Speaker 1: something called mass. Yeah, it's possible for a particle to
Speaker 1: have like its own inherent mass for that not to
Speaker 1: be zero. But for all the particles we have they
Speaker 1: come from the Higgs boson. So the electron and all
Speaker 1: the corks that have zero inherent mass, all of their
Speaker 1: mass comes from this interaction of the Higgs boson. And
Speaker 1: so for the mathematically inclined people out there who know
Speaker 1: about like equations of motions and lagranges, you know, this
Speaker 1: changes effectively how a particle gets kinetic energy, and so
Speaker 1: it changes the equations of motions for how it moves
Speaker 1: in exactly the same way as if it had this
Speaker 1: pure mass, right, right, So we get our inertial mass
Speaker 1: from the Higgs field, but not all inertial mass is
Speaker 1: due to the Higgs field, right, Like you can be
Speaker 1: hard to move and not interact with the Higgs field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is a common misconception. People think that all
Speaker 1: mass comes from the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson does
Speaker 1: give mass to the electron into the corks, but there
Speaker 1: are other things in the universe that have mass that
Speaker 1: don't come from the Higgs boson. For example, you you
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass that doesn't come from the Higgs.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at a proton, a proton is
Speaker 1: made of three quarks. Those quarks really don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of mass, But the proton does have a lot
Speaker 1: of mass, and most of its mass doesn't come from
Speaker 1: those corks. It comes from other internal energy inside the proton,
Speaker 1: And any kind of stored energy also gives mass to
Speaker 1: an object. Right, Like you're saying, and this kind of
Speaker 1: blew my mind that black holes can have mass, but
Speaker 1: they don't interact with the Higgs field. Yeah, black holes,
Speaker 1: for example, have a lot of mass. Right, we don't
Speaker 1: know what's inside a black hole. We have no idea
Speaker 1: the state of matter that's in there. And you could,
Speaker 1: for example, have a black hole made purely of photons.
Speaker 1: Photons have no mass, but together you concentrate all this
Speaker 1: stuff together into space, and a black hole made purely
Speaker 1: of photons can have mass, and none of that comes
Speaker 1: from the Higgs field. Meaning, like the black hole is,
Speaker 1: it's hard to move, Like if you wanted to move
Speaker 1: a black hole, it would be hard. Will it be
Speaker 1: hard to sort of push it anyways, but it'd be
Speaker 1: hard to move. But it doesn't interact with the Higgs
Speaker 1: field when it moves. No, it does not interact with
Speaker 1: the Higgs fields when it moves. The Higgs field only
Speaker 1: interacts with things that feel the weak force. Right, the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson is sort of a part of the weak force,
Speaker 1: and some black holes, for example, made out of photons,
Speaker 1: don't have any interaction with the weak force. And it's
Speaker 1: not just black holes. Right. You take a box of
Speaker 1: photons that has mass. You put a bunch of photons
Speaker 1: into a box. Now that box has some mass. What
Speaker 1: I just filled the box with light. Like, take a
Speaker 1: box and line it with perfect mirrors on the inside,
Speaker 1: and shoot a laser in it and enclose it. Now
Speaker 1: that box has some mass. Why because it has internal
Speaker 1: stored energy and that gives things mass in a way
Speaker 1: that we don't really understand. But things that have internal
Speaker 1: stored energy have mass. They're harder to move the property
Speaker 1: of stored energy in our universe. Wow, sounds like a
Speaker 1: great gift that could give my kids next year. Just
Speaker 1: the box of flight. I'll to him, here's a bunch
Speaker 1: of mass us just shying a flashlight and close the
Speaker 1: bus and then give it to them. I have a
Speaker 1: massive gift for you kids. You're gonna light it. And also, interestingly,
Speaker 1: dark matter doesn't get mass from the Higgs. But we
Speaker 1: know definitely dark matter is matter, and it has some
Speaker 1: sort of inertial mass because it's zipping around at this
Speaker 1: meat of light, but it doesn't interact with the Higgs field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we think that dark matter does not interact with the
Speaker 1: weak force because we've been looking for it. We have
Speaker 1: these detectors underground where we think dark matter wind will
Speaker 1: pass through and if it feels the weak force will
Speaker 1: bump into a zenon atom, and we haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: And if it did feel the weak force, we really
Speaker 1: should have seen it by now. That tells us pretty
Speaker 1: clearly that dark matter doesn't feel the weak force. And
Speaker 1: to get mass from the Higgs, you have to feel
Speaker 1: the weak force. Electrons and quarks and all the objects
Speaker 1: they get their mass from the Higgs do it through
Speaker 1: the weak force, and so dark matter doesn't feel the
Speaker 1: weak force, can't get its mass from the Higgs. That's
Speaker 1: most of the mass in the universe, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like sixty seven percent of all the mass in the universe.
Speaker 1: It's more like, yeah, wow, but so where does dark
Speaker 1: matter get its mass? Is there a dark Higgs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there could be a dark Higgs exactly. There could be
Speaker 1: a whole dark sector with a dark Higgs boson. There
Speaker 1: could be other mechanisms to get mass would be like
Speaker 1: having a dark Santa Claust, like a gringe. I guess
Speaker 1: to were like an anti Santa Claust. That's the topic
Speaker 1: of our upcoming book, The Devil particle, right, dark is
Speaker 1: the devil. There you go, and it has its own
Speaker 1: dark mass. Yeah, and so in the end, the Higgs
Speaker 1: boson gives mass to like the tiniest fraction of the universe,
Speaker 1: you know, of all the mass in the universe. It
Speaker 1: only gives mass to the electrons and the corks and
Speaker 1: the ws and z bosons. But that's the tiniest fraction
Speaker 1: of even protons, which are a tiny fraction of all
Speaker 1: the mass that's out there. So God particle is a
Speaker 1: bit of an overttatement, that's right. It's more like a
Speaker 1: demigod particle. Maybe it's a minor deity particle at best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more like a saint particle. There you go. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into what gives the Higgs boson itself mass,
Speaker 1: because we know it gives mass to the electron and
Speaker 1: the cork and we're all made out of electrons and pork.
Speaker 1: So even though it's not that significant in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. It's pretty significant to us. But what
Speaker 1: gives the Higgs itself? It's mass. So let's get into that.
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Higgs boson and what gives itself mass.
Speaker 1: We know the Higgs boson gives mass to the electron
Speaker 1: and the corks, which is what we're all made out of.
Speaker 1: But what gives the Higgs itself? It's mass? Because the
Speaker 1: Higgs has mass, it ate too many cookies. I think
Speaker 1: the Higgs looks great. Man, come on, that's right. We
Speaker 1: want to practice particle positivity here, but not the electron.
Speaker 1: We can be as negative as we want with that one.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I try to be neutral about the Higgs.
Speaker 1: All right? Yeah, So that what gives the Higgs it's
Speaker 1: itself mass? Like, does it interact with itself? Is there
Speaker 1: another like Higgs particle that gives the Higgs mass? It's
Speaker 1: super interesting. Actually, there's lots of really fascinating wrinkles here,
Speaker 1: but the short answer is that the Higgs gets mass
Speaker 1: from two different places, one from itself and the other
Speaker 1: is from all the other particles that it interacts with. WHOA,
Speaker 1: So you can get mass from two different places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything that changes how you move through the universe. Anything
Speaker 1: that changes essentially your inertia changes your mass. And so
Speaker 1: as particles interact with other particles as they fly through
Speaker 1: the universe, it can change their mass just the same way.
Speaker 1: An electron flying through the universe is interacting with the
Speaker 1: Higgs field in a way that changes its mass. It
Speaker 1: could interact with other things in the same way to
Speaker 1: change its mass. That's weird, And but that's not true
Speaker 1: for like the electron and the cork, right, But like
Speaker 1: the electron doesn't interact with itself. It only interacts with
Speaker 1: the Higgs fields to get mass. The electron doesn't directly
Speaker 1: interact with itself, that's right. It interacts with other particles though,
Speaker 1: like the photon. But those interactions we don't think necessarily
Speaker 1: give it mass. The interactions with the Higgs field do
Speaker 1: give it mass. Let's get into to these. So how
Speaker 1: does it get mass from itself? Like it makes itself
Speaker 1: hard to move? Why is it holding itself back, Daniel,
Speaker 1: Why doesn't it just free itself? It hasn't achieved total
Speaker 1: Higgs positivity yet, No jokes aside, The Higgs boson is
Speaker 1: really interesting and weird because it interacts with itself. Like
Speaker 1: two Higgs boson is flying through the universe will bounce
Speaker 1: off of each other, which is not true of other particles,
Speaker 1: like photons don't bounce off of each other. Photons only
Speaker 1: interact with particles that have electric charge. And since the
Speaker 1: photon itself is neutral, two photons will pass right through
Speaker 1: each other too, Higgs bosons will not. So that means
Speaker 1: that the Higgs boson, as it's flying through the universe
Speaker 1: feels the Higgs field just like the electron does, and
Speaker 1: just like the corks do. Well. That means like you're
Speaker 1: a Higgs field, your your perturbation in the Higgs field,
Speaker 1: you're moving along and you're you're you have trouble going
Speaker 1: through your own field kind of yeah, yeah, exactly couples
Speaker 1: to itself, and so those wiggles in the Higgs field
Speaker 1: affect the wiggles in the Higgs field, which affect the
Speaker 1: wiggles in the Higgs field. And this is sort of
Speaker 1: like very crazy nonlinear exinitial effect there, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's a convergent series fortunately, and so the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: ends up giving itself some mass. But because you know,
Speaker 1: like the electron doesn't have trouble going through its own field, right,
Speaker 1: Or the corks don't have trole going through their own field.
Speaker 1: But somehow the Higgs field, it has trouble going through itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the electron doesn't couple to the electron field, right,
Speaker 1: a couple to the photon field. So imagine two fields
Speaker 1: in space, the electron field and the electromagnetic field that's
Speaker 1: the field of the photon. Those two fields talk to
Speaker 1: each other, right. Electrons create photons, which wids through the universe,
Speaker 1: but it also can loop back. Right. The photon field
Speaker 1: then talks to the electron field, and so there are
Speaker 1: similar kinds of effects. For the electron doesn't directly talk
Speaker 1: to itself, but it can sort of interact with itself
Speaker 1: through other fields because its energy can wash into the
Speaker 1: photon field and back into the electron field. The Higgs
Speaker 1: does it directly, right, and the photon doesn't, which makes
Speaker 1: this quite interesting. But gluons can also. Gluons can interact
Speaker 1: with themselves. Yeah, they're pretty sticking that the sticklers. But
Speaker 1: one interesting thing is that we don't you haven't like
Speaker 1: measured this effect that you're not quite sure how important
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, So the Higgs boson gets its mass
Speaker 1: from two different ways. One is that interacts with itself
Speaker 1: and the other is interacting with the other particles. We
Speaker 1: don't know how much of its mass comes from either
Speaker 1: category because we haven't yet been able to measure the
Speaker 1: Higgs interacting with itself, and it would actually look really interesting,
Speaker 1: like in a particle collider, if you made a Higgs
Speaker 1: and give it a lot of extra energy, the interaction
Speaker 1: with itself sometimes would look really weird that higgs boson
Speaker 1: would turn into three higgs bosons, like a single Higgs
Speaker 1: goes to a triple higgs. Wait, what, like it has
Speaker 1: so much energy it can like have offsprings. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we think about these particles in terms of these
Speaker 1: like little interactions. They're like little tinker toys you can
Speaker 1: use to build up more complicated things. For example, electron
Speaker 1: flying through the universe can create a photon, so you
Speaker 1: have this little interaction. We have an electron line coming in,
Speaker 1: an electron line going out, and a photon line coming out. Also,
Speaker 1: for higgs boson, it's more complicated. You can have four
Speaker 1: Higgs lines coming into a single point, which means you
Speaker 1: can have a single Higgs line coming in and re
Speaker 1: Higgs is coming out. We can have two Higgs is
Speaker 1: coming in and two Higgs is coming out, and so
Speaker 1: this is really strange interaction, but it's not very powerful
Speaker 1: and so we haven't seen it yet. We needed to
Speaker 1: do lots of particle collisions before we see evidence of
Speaker 1: this actual interaction happening. I see. So then, how do
Speaker 1: you know these two ways of getting mass exist? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you know that this is how the Higgs
Speaker 1: gets its mass if you don't know what the actual
Speaker 1: effect is. So we're not still a hundred percent sure
Speaker 1: because you know, we found this thing. It looks like
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. So far, everything we've discovered about it
Speaker 1: describes the Higgs boson we expected to see, but you know,
Speaker 1: we do need to nail down these details. Like when
Speaker 1: we first saw it, all we knew was that there
Speaker 1: was some new particle that turned into two photons, and
Speaker 1: then we found okay, also does these other things we
Speaker 1: expect the Higgs boson to do. So we're still not
Speaker 1: a hundred percent sure sort of what exactly it is.
Speaker 1: We've discovered we think it operates this way. Some of
Speaker 1: these things are still theoretical and haven't been exactly nailed
Speaker 1: down many of them by now and ten years later,
Speaker 1: we have seen and measured and it's doing exactly what
Speaker 1: we expect, but there are still room for surprises there.
Speaker 1: We're not a hundred percent interesting, but you sort of
Speaker 1: know it. It is interacting with itself. It does sort
Speaker 1: of auto interacts. We're not a hundred percent sure. We
Speaker 1: haven't measured that exactly, so we haven't isolated that interaction
Speaker 1: and proven that it exists in our universe. In the
Speaker 1: theory it does, but it's possible, you know that there's
Speaker 1: something else going on. We're pretty sure. We're just haven't
Speaker 1: experimentally verified that, right, Right, And you said the other
Speaker 1: way that it gets masses through interactions with other particles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, as we mentioned earlier, the Higgs interacts with
Speaker 1: all these other particles, and any particle flying through space
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of things. Right, When you think
Speaker 1: about a quantum particle going from A to B, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't think about it like calmly floating through space by itself,
Speaker 1: the way like a baseball might go from your hand
Speaker 1: to your friend's hand. These particles are always doing something.
Speaker 1: They're always like surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles
Speaker 1: are constantly interacting with the fields around them, and so
Speaker 1: when a Higgs boson flies through space, for example, it's
Speaker 1: interacting with the top cork field, and with the your
Speaker 1: weak field, and with the electron fields and all these things.
Speaker 1: It's constantly interacting with them. It can like turn into
Speaker 1: a top and anti top particle and then back into
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson momentarily. And so all these interactions also
Speaker 1: change how the Higgs boson flies through space, which means
Speaker 1: it changes effectively how the Higgs boson moves, which means
Speaker 1: they change the Higgs mass. Interesting, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the Higgs is so popular that when it tries to
Speaker 1: go through a party, it's it's like trying to talk
Speaker 1: to everybody. That slows it down. Yeah, the more you interact,
Speaker 1: the more there's the possibility to gain or lose mass
Speaker 1: as you move through the University's interactions can both have
Speaker 1: positive or negative contributions to your mass, depending on how
Speaker 1: they change how you move. Wait, what so like in
Speaker 1: my Higgs boson, I'm flying through space, and um, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm I have to interact with all the other
Speaker 1: fields that are around me because that the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: I'm not a popular particle, but what if there's nothing
Speaker 1: in those fields. I know, the electron field is all
Speaker 1: around us, but there aren't electrons in every spot in space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're aren't electrons in every spot in space, but those
Speaker 1: fields are never at zero. Right, Every quantum field fills
Speaker 1: all of space and they never actually at zero. Like
Speaker 1: if you think about empty space, it still has those
Speaker 1: fields in them, and quantum fields because their quantum can
Speaker 1: never be totally relaxed down to zero. There's always a
Speaker 1: little bit of energy in all of those fields. So
Speaker 1: if you're in a Higgs boson, you're always interacting with
Speaker 1: the electron field. You don't need like an actual electron
Speaker 1: to be there. You can think about it like as
Speaker 1: virtual electrons if you prefer, rather than thinking about the
Speaker 1: electron field like a potential electron. Yeah, exactly, the possibility
Speaker 1: to have an electron. Yeah. Right, So then you're saying,
Speaker 1: like the Higgs boson interacts with all these other fields,
Speaker 1: and so that's what or potentially interacts with these other fields,
Speaker 1: and that's what slows it down. That's one thing that
Speaker 1: changes its mass, right, And it's not just about slowing
Speaker 1: it down. It's about changing how easy it is to
Speaker 1: speed up or to slow down. Right. Inertia is not
Speaker 1: just about like velocity, it's about acceleration. So it's about
Speaker 1: changes in velocity. And one of the really interesting thing
Speaker 1: about interacting with the other particles is that some of
Speaker 1: the interactions make the higgs heavier and some of those
Speaker 1: interactions make the Higgs lighter because of the way the
Speaker 1: minus signs come out in these calculations. Wait, what like
Speaker 1: on an individual basis, like on a on an event basis,
Speaker 1: or like on a per field basis, on a per
Speaker 1: field like some fields boost up the higgs and some
Speaker 1: fields slowed down. Yeah. For example, if you interact with
Speaker 1: boson fields like the W and the Z, or any
Speaker 1: particle with integer spin bosons, then it goes in one direction,
Speaker 1: and if you interact with fermion fields like the electrons
Speaker 1: and the quirks, it goes in the other directions. So
Speaker 1: fermions and bosons are playing like this tug of war,
Speaker 1: or one of them is making the higgs heavier, the
Speaker 1: other one is making the higgs lighter. WHOA, So if
Speaker 1: one of them went away, like, could the higgs boson
Speaker 1: have negative mass? Yeah? That's a really interesting question. It
Speaker 1: could drive it down to zero, but it could never
Speaker 1: actually go negative. Negative mass doesn't make any sense, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you tell me. I know we've talked
Speaker 1: about the the idea of negative mass on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: like maybe you can create anti gravity with negative mass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: negative mass is not something we've seen. So there are
Speaker 1: some theoretical explorations of that possibility. And we actually did
Speaker 1: a whole podcast episode about exotic particles and negative mass.
Speaker 1: So do you want to learn more about that, go
Speaker 1: dig into that. So in theory, it is possible, I
Speaker 1: should say, to have negative mass, right. One of the
Speaker 1: really interesting things though, is that these corrections, the things
Speaker 1: that make the particle heavier or lighter, these things are huge.
Speaker 1: These things are much much bigger than the actual mass
Speaker 1: of the particle. A particle has a hundred protons worth
Speaker 1: of mass, but these corrections they're like a billion protons
Speaker 1: worth of mass or ten billion protons worth of mass,
Speaker 1: meaning like the overwhelming majority of its mass it gets
Speaker 1: it from interacting with other fields like it itself. Interacting
Speaker 1: with itself is not as strong. We actually don't know.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that these corrections sort of cancel out.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like take the number a hundred, add
Speaker 1: a billion to it, and now subtract a billion. That's
Speaker 1: how the Higgs boson has a massive about a hundred.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing is that those corrections come really
Speaker 1: really close to canceling out. Like the top cork field
Speaker 1: makes the Higgs much much much much heavier, and then
Speaker 1: the w Boson field makes the Higgs much much much
Speaker 1: much lighter. And those two effects, which really could have
Speaker 1: almost been any number, managed to almost perfectly cancel out.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Higgs boson could have had a mass
Speaker 1: of a billion or ten billion protons, but these effects,
Speaker 1: these really huge effects just sort of managed to cancel
Speaker 1: out to keep the Higgs boson mass pretty small. Interesting
Speaker 1: like they cancel out statistically or like before it even
Speaker 1: gets moving. So for an individual Higgs boson, all these
Speaker 1: things are just sort of happening simultaneously. And you know,
Speaker 1: the mass comes from the interaction with these fields, and
Speaker 1: so all these effects are happening all the time, and
Speaker 1: so it happens for every individual Higgs boson, Like all
Speaker 1: the Higgs bosons have the same mass. It's not like
Speaker 1: there's a you know, a population of Higgs is with
Speaker 1: different masses I see or like, well, I mean, like
Speaker 1: what if you have a Higgs surrounded by a bunch
Speaker 1: of electrons, It might have a different mass, would it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really cool question. You might imagine that if
Speaker 1: there are more fermions nearby, that would like strengthen it.
Speaker 1: But the interaction come from the field itself, and whether
Speaker 1: or not the field is excited doesn't change how much
Speaker 1: it interacts with the Higgs. I see. Interesting. So then
Speaker 1: what's kind of the overall mass of the Higgs field,
Speaker 1: Like what is it in the range of an electron
Speaker 1: or a proton or a cork. So the thing that
Speaker 1: we've measured in our collider has a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five protons worth of mass, and so there's different contributions there.
Speaker 1: There's it's the mass it gets from itself, which is
Speaker 1: some unknown number we haven't measured yet we think is
Speaker 1: somewhere close to a hundred. And then there's huge and
Speaker 1: added contributions from top corks, for example, around the number
Speaker 1: of a billion. And then there's huge negative contributions from
Speaker 1: like ws and z bosons had also about a billion.
Speaker 1: So you have like a hundred plus a billion minus
Speaker 1: a billion comes out to be around a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five. Oh, I see, So actually most of its
Speaker 1: mass comes from its interaction with itself. The rest of
Speaker 1: its mass is sort of cancels out. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: fact that those two things cancel out is like one
Speaker 1: of the deepest mysteries in physics, Like why did you
Speaker 1: do two huge numbers exactly cancel out? It's like if
Speaker 1: some he said I'm gonna give you a random amount
Speaker 1: of money between zero and a trillion dollars, and I'm
Speaker 1: also going to bill you a random amount of money
Speaker 1: between zero and a trillion, you know, you would be
Speaker 1: surprised if those two numbers came to within a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars of each other. But that's basically the story of
Speaker 1: our universe. Whoa weird. Yeah, that's very suspicious. It is
Speaker 1: very suspicious. And anytime you have like a coincidence like
Speaker 1: that in physics, you're like, let me go look for
Speaker 1: a reason. Maybe this tells me that there's something deeper
Speaker 1: going on, right, right, It's like, how come the milk
Speaker 1: disappeared on Christmas morning and that has a milk mus
Speaker 1: stare that's very strange. Then maybe there's a similar explanation
Speaker 1: that unifies all the data exactly. That's right, Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a simpler Santa hypothesis. All right, well, let's get
Speaker 1: into what does it mean that the Higgs interacts with
Speaker 1: itself and what does it mean that all of its
Speaker 1: interactions with the other fields cancel out. So let's get
Speaker 1: into that. But first let's take another quick break. Al Right,
Speaker 1: we are going deep into the Higgs field and the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson today. What gives the Higgs it's mass? We
Speaker 1: know the Higgs gives mass to other particles, but what
Speaker 1: gives the Higgs itself mass? And we broke it down
Speaker 1: to it's mostly it's interaction with itself. Well, there are
Speaker 1: these three contributions. We don't actually know how much of
Speaker 1: it comes from itself. We think it might be around
Speaker 1: a hundred, but it's sort of a guests. We need
Speaker 1: to measure that exactly, and we can measure that when
Speaker 1: we look for this Higgs interaction with itself in the
Speaker 1: particle collider. So that's something we have to look forward
Speaker 1: to in particle experiments in the future to nail down
Speaker 1: exactly how much comes from itself. Maybe the Higgs doesn't
Speaker 1: want you to know how much mass it has. It's
Speaker 1: a private number. I'm sorry, Higgs. It's for the good
Speaker 1: of the universe, right, we all have to make sacrifices.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is your role, all right. So what
Speaker 1: does it all mean, Daniel? What can we learn about
Speaker 1: this weird part of our universe? Well, it might mean
Speaker 1: that there's something going on. You know, anytime you see
Speaker 1: a coincidence in physics, you wonder like, is that really
Speaker 1: a coincidence or is there a reason? You know, It's
Speaker 1: like if you flip the coin a million times and
Speaker 1: then you discovered the number of heads and the number
Speaker 1: of tails add up to be a million, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: that's obvious, right, it's because heads and tails are connected.
Speaker 1: You can only have one for each flip. If you
Speaker 1: didn't understand the connection between heads and tails, it might
Speaker 1: seem like a big coincidence to you. So here we
Speaker 1: have what seems like a really big coincidence that the
Speaker 1: top cork makes the Higgs super heavy, and the w
Speaker 1: makes it much much lighter, and it all comes out
Speaker 1: to be almost cancel. That seems like a weird coincidence,
Speaker 1: Like it has a whole bunch of plus billions and
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of negative billions, and somehow they all
Speaker 1: add up to almost zero, all add up to almost zero.
Speaker 1: That's really weird, and we wonder if there's a reason.
Speaker 1: And because we have other particles that have similar situations,
Speaker 1: and there is a reason. For example, you might ask,
Speaker 1: what about the photon. The photon also flies through space,
Speaker 1: it interacts with other fields. Why don't all those other
Speaker 1: fields end up giving the photon mass? Right? What the
Speaker 1: interaction of the photon with the w and with the
Speaker 1: electrons give make the photon massive? And there is a reason. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a symmetry in the universe. We talked about it once.
Speaker 1: It's a gauge symmetry that protects the photon. It says,
Speaker 1: the photon can only do its job of protecting this
Speaker 1: gauge symmetry if it has no mass. All those things
Speaker 1: have to add up to be exactly zero. So that's
Speaker 1: true for the photon. It's also true for the gluon.
Speaker 1: The gluon interacts with all sorts of crazy things, but
Speaker 1: all those things have to add up to zero because
Speaker 1: there's a color symmetry for the strong force. So we've
Speaker 1: identified these symmetries in the universe that protect the photon
Speaker 1: and the gluon. As far as we know, the higgs
Speaker 1: doesn't have that kind of symmetry. There's no other thing
Speaker 1: in the universe that would insist that the Higgs have
Speaker 1: everything balance out like it almost councels out to zero.
Speaker 1: So maybe I don't know, maybe it's not really there.
Speaker 1: Maybe there is a symmetry with the Higgs that you're
Speaker 1: not seeing. Is that possible. That's exactly it, And that's
Speaker 1: what people are wondering, like, maybe this is a hint
Speaker 1: that there's some other weird new symmetry out there in
Speaker 1: the universe. And so this is the genesis of the
Speaker 1: whole idea of soup your symmetry, this idea that maybe
Speaker 1: there are more particles out there. Remember we said that
Speaker 1: fermions make the Higgs heavier and bosons make the Higgs lighter. Well,
Speaker 1: one way to explain how that all balances out perfectly
Speaker 1: is to say, well, maybe for every fermion there is
Speaker 1: a boson and they balance perfectly, and then for every
Speaker 1: boson there's a fermion and they balance perfectly. Wait, you're saying, why,
Speaker 1: why doesn't balance out perfectly? Right, because it doesn't balance
Speaker 1: out perfectly for the Higgs. We don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: well it balances out, because it could be that the
Speaker 1: Higgs mass all comes from its own self interactions, or
Speaker 1: could be that it almost balances out perfectly. Either way,
Speaker 1: there's something going on because these big numbers are either
Speaker 1: exactly canceling or almost exactly canceling. Either way, there must
Speaker 1: be some explanation. Really weird if that was totally random.
Speaker 1: I think you're saying that in your theories it's not
Speaker 1: canceling out, which either means their theories are missing something
Speaker 1: or just the weird thing about the Higgs. You don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, right, We don't know for sure. It
Speaker 1: could be balancing out, but you haven't met. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not sure if all those quantum corrections perfectly balance out
Speaker 1: or if they almost balance out. But either way, something
Speaker 1: weird is going on because you're adding and subtracting two
Speaker 1: arbitrary numbers that are both in the trillions, and they're
Speaker 1: canceling out almost exactly, So something is keeping them close
Speaker 1: to each other. And one way to keep those numbers
Speaker 1: close to each other to have it be like they
Speaker 1: have to be close to each other. The way like
Speaker 1: the number of heads us the number of tails has
Speaker 1: to equal the number of coin flips, is to double
Speaker 1: the number of particles. Every time you have a top cork,
Speaker 1: which makes it heavier, you have a boson particle we
Speaker 1: call it the stop cork, which makes it lighter in
Speaker 1: exactly the same amount. And if you have a w
Speaker 1: particle that makes it lighter, you add a new particle
Speaker 1: called the we know, which makes it heavier. So for
Speaker 1: every fermion, you create a new boson, and forever boson
Speaker 1: you create a new fermion, and then they just naturally
Speaker 1: cancel out because there's this symmetry to them. It's like
Speaker 1: they're coming these pairs where one of them makes it
Speaker 1: heavier and one of them makes it lighter. Right, So
Speaker 1: I think you're saying, like, if we assume that the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson is supposed to be like a coin flip,
Speaker 1: then there's something wrong. But maybe like it's not a coin,
Speaker 1: maybe it's like more like a dime maybe, or like
Speaker 1: a three sided coin. Yeah, maybe there's something else going
Speaker 1: on exactly, And there are a bunch of different ideas
Speaker 1: for how to balance those things out and how to
Speaker 1: keep the Higgs boson close to zero mass, and then
Speaker 1: some people think, hey, maybe it's just a coincidence. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it is just a bunch of coin flips and
Speaker 1: we just happen to get a Higgs boson that doesn't
Speaker 1: weigh very much, and that's just the universe we're in.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's all just random, right, right, Yeah, Like maybe
Speaker 1: that's it's just it is because that's the way it is.
Speaker 1: Or maybe there are like multiple universes. That's the other theory, right,
Speaker 1: Like maybe there's a whole bunch of an infinite number
Speaker 1: of universes, some in which the Higgs has a different mass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if the Higgs had the mass of you know,
Speaker 1: ten trillion, for example, the universe would be very very different.
Speaker 1: It would look very different, and we might not be
Speaker 1: here to ask the questions. So that's sort of the
Speaker 1: anthropic answer, is to say, you don't need an explanation
Speaker 1: because you only notice it because it happens to have
Speaker 1: these values, and if it had different values, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here to it, is right. I don't really like
Speaker 1: that answer because it's sort of unsatisfying. That's right, because
Speaker 1: you're mis right, I am a little bit misanthropic. That's
Speaker 1: my principles. I like the supersymmetry answer. It's beautiful. It says, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this perfect balance in these things in the universe,
Speaker 1: and the reason they add up to zero is because
Speaker 1: there's this symmetry. You haven't discovered it. It's a nice story.
Speaker 1: The problem is that we don't see those other particles.
Speaker 1: If those particles existed, they would have to exist and
Speaker 1: have the same mass as the particles we know. The
Speaker 1: stop particle would have to have the same mass at
Speaker 1: the top particle. But we haven't seen it yet, and
Speaker 1: we should have seen it sort of by now. And
Speaker 1: so supersymmetry was a really exciting idea ten years ago
Speaker 1: or so. We thought we might find it at the
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider, but nothing. Yeah, you sound really bummed up.
Speaker 1: Imagine discovering that instead of having twelve particles, we have
Speaker 1: twenty four, right, Like you just double the number of
Speaker 1: particles you can play with and all these crazy things
Speaker 1: and they interact with each other like it would have
Speaker 1: been a gold mine for particle physics. Instead, all we
Speaker 1: found was the Higgs boson and then nothing else after that. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like what if Mrs Santa also came and gave
Speaker 1: you presents. If you get double the number of presents, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's the Santa symmetry super Santa symmetry. But does that
Speaker 1: mean you're also sort of against this idea of the multiverse,
Speaker 1: Like from a theoretical physics point of view, it's not
Speaker 1: as elegant to have a multiverse. I think the multiverse
Speaker 1: is elegant for other reasons, right, because it tells us
Speaker 1: something about the context of our universe, and it broadens
Speaker 1: the possibility of existence. I think it's cool from that
Speaker 1: point of view. I don't think it's a great way
Speaker 1: to answer these kinds of questions like why is this
Speaker 1: number the way that it is. It's not really an
Speaker 1: answer to say, well, it's just random and just just
Speaker 1: is the one you got. I like answers that say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a reason for everything, and in the end, if
Speaker 1: you keep digging, if you keep unwrapping the presents, there
Speaker 1: is at the core a reason why the universe is
Speaker 1: this way and not some other way. That's the whole
Speaker 1: project of physics. So sore not given up on that, right, Right,
Speaker 1: you still have to work, right, I mean, you'd be
Speaker 1: out of a job if the universe was just friend
Speaker 1: of Yeah, and it's not just about my paycheck. It's
Speaker 1: about the curiosity. You know. I'm in this field and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are curious about the
Speaker 1: universe because they think there are answers out there and
Speaker 1: that there's a moment where you could learn something about
Speaker 1: the universe and like, oh, wow, the universe is this
Speaker 1: way because of this, That makes perfect sense. How could
Speaker 1: we have not seen that before? That's the Christmas morning
Speaker 1: that we are all hoping for in particle physics, and
Speaker 1: so to say oh, there's not really an answer, that
Speaker 1: sort of takes away Christmas. Man. Well, I mean, but
Speaker 1: I mean philosophically speaking, it's the very unscientific stance to
Speaker 1: have right on scientific point of view. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have this feeling that maybe there's a real symmetry and
Speaker 1: beauty about the universe, but you don't know, right, it's
Speaker 1: just sort of a human feeling and you're going with
Speaker 1: you're good about that, Yeah, But the scientific part of
Speaker 1: it is that we will accept whatever the universe says.
Speaker 1: And so we really wanted supersymatry to be there, and
Speaker 1: we went out and looked for we were all excited
Speaker 1: about it, and the universe said nope, there's nothing here,
Speaker 1: and we took it. We're not like insisting on supersymmatry
Speaker 1: no matter what. If it's not there, it's not there.
Speaker 1: We're gonna move on and find other ideas. Right, Sad
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. What are you gonna do? Exactly?
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go and strike. But it did make
Speaker 1: finding the Higgs boson more complicated because we didn't know
Speaker 1: what its mass was going to be in advance. We
Speaker 1: didn't know how all these numbers added up. We didn't
Speaker 1: know maybe the Higgs boson is super duper crazy heavy
Speaker 1: in our universe and we could never even see it
Speaker 1: in our colliders. And so when we found the Higgs
Speaker 1: boson and measured it to be a D twenty five,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of head scratching. People like, that
Speaker 1: is a really weird number for all these reasons, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: it all has to add up and cancel out just
Speaker 1: perfectly to get such a small number, Like you looked
Speaker 1: for it where it's interaction with itself, would say, it
Speaker 1: is if you ignore the interaction with the other fields,
Speaker 1: and that's where you found it. Yeah, pretty close to
Speaker 1: where we found it. So why did you look for
Speaker 1: it there? If it would be weird to find that?
Speaker 1: We looked for it everywhere. We just didn't know in
Speaker 1: advance where it was going to be. You know, we've
Speaker 1: been looking for the Higgs bosons for years and the
Speaker 1: reason we say it took fifty years is that people
Speaker 1: started looking for the Higgs boson a much lower energy
Speaker 1: colliders because we could you know, I remember there was
Speaker 1: a time when we were working on the Tevatron, the
Speaker 1: collider just outside Chicago, and there was a chance that
Speaker 1: it could discover the Higgs boson, but only if it
Speaker 1: was like less than a hundred and fifteen g v
Speaker 1: or so. Anything heavier than that would be really hard
Speaker 1: to find. And so it was just sort of like
Speaker 1: up to nature, like are we going to find it
Speaker 1: here or do we have to wait for the next accelerator,
Speaker 1: And so, you know, you just don't know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you've found it, you know, you sort of know
Speaker 1: where it is how much of ways, but there are
Speaker 1: still big mysteries about it, right, and some that sort
Speaker 1: of really kind of pointed huge mysteries about the universe,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's not sort of put together the way
Speaker 1: we think it is right now, and I'd say it's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest mysteries in particle physics. I mean,
Speaker 1: people talk about dark matter and dark energy, these are
Speaker 1: questions about the universe. But this is a really huge
Speaker 1: problem in particle physics. Nobody understands why the Higgs isn't
Speaker 1: super duper crazy heavy, And it's a really big screaming
Speaker 1: clue that there must be something else going on in
Speaker 1: particle physics, some part of this puzzle that we're missing,
Speaker 1: but we haven't figured it out yet. Wow, what would
Speaker 1: happen if the Higgs was super duper heavy? Would we
Speaker 1: also be super duper heavy? Well, that's a really great question. Indirectly,
Speaker 1: it would change our masks. We get our mass from
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, and the value of our mass comes
Speaker 1: from like where the Higgs field settles into its lowest state,
Speaker 1: and that's partially determined by the mass of the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: The two are a little bit connected, right, So everything
Speaker 1: would be heavier, then everything would have a different mass. Yes,
Speaker 1: things would be a lot heavier. So we suspected that
Speaker 1: the Higgs was probably light for that reason, it would
Speaker 1: be hard for the Higgs to be super duper massive
Speaker 1: and for us to have the universe that we do have.
Speaker 1: Weren't sure exactly what value it had. So it's all
Speaker 1: the Higgs fault. It's all the Higgs, exactly it is.
Speaker 1: After all, it's not the cookies, it's not your WheelPower,
Speaker 1: it's the Higgs. Thank you for st Peter, Yes, thank
Speaker 1: you physicist for giving me an excuse. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: another huge mystery about the universe. I guess if you're
Speaker 1: in particle physics, I mean, this is the sort of
Speaker 1: the holy Grail kind of right now, it really is.
Speaker 1: It's one of the deepest questions in physics and one
Speaker 1: that we hope we might answer with another collider. Oh conveniently,
Speaker 1: if we give you more money, you're saying you can
Speaker 1: solve this question. That's right, We're passing around the collection plate.
Speaker 1: So I think the lesson is that every time we
Speaker 1: answer a question in physics, it just opens the door
Speaker 1: to an even bigger, deeper question, And I hope we
Speaker 1: just keep unwrapping those presents forever and ever. Every day
Speaker 1: is Christmas, or potentially in Christmas day for a physicist,
Speaker 1: except that every day it's also not a Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: so you must be disappointed. Sixty four days a year,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ups and downs. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio, visit
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