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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I'll see Daniel and Jorge food truck going,

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Speaker 1: and we expect to see it on a street corner

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Speaker 1: anytime soon. Not yet. We still need a few things.

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Speaker 1: We're missing a menu and a chef. Oh, and a vehicle.

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Speaker 1: I mean our food truck is just missing the food

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Speaker 1: and the truck. Yeah, that's right, because I've been working

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Speaker 1: on the special particle physics twist that we're going to

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Speaker 1: be offering. Ooh, sounds tantalizing. Is it like some kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting flavor fusion or some weird quirky flavors. It's

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Speaker 1: a special device to suck out all of the Higgs

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Speaker 1: bosons from your food so you can eat it without

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Speaker 1: gaining any mass. WHOA, that would be massive. It's not

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Speaker 1: something we take lightly. You should give that some heavy

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Speaker 1: thinking first. Hi am Orhammer, cartoonists and the creator of

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Speaker 1: PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and

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Speaker 1: a professor at UC Irvine, and I wonder what a

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Speaker 1: bowl of Higgs bosons would taste like. What don't we

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Speaker 1: eat a bowl of Higgs bosons anytime we eat a

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Speaker 1: bowl of anything? Yeah, there are Higgs bosons in everything

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Speaker 1: we eat. But I want a pure dose of higgss,

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Speaker 1: you know what is their inherent flavor. Wouldn't be kind

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Speaker 1: of a heavy meal, though, it would probably make me heavier,

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Speaker 1: that's for sure. Why Ye. Usually eating a bowl of

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Speaker 1: anything will give you a lot of calories, unless it's

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Speaker 1: a bowl of anti matter that'll make you literally lighter. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it would make explode, wouldn't it. A teaspoon of anti

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Speaker 1: matter we make your whole town explode? Yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: would annihilate your appetite. Well, I'm anti exploding your town,

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Speaker 1: so you might want to think about other ways to

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Speaker 1: And I laid your appetite. Is that only because we

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Speaker 1: live in basically the same town exactly? But anyways, Welcome

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Speaker 1: to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in which we enjoy the flavor of

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Speaker 1: the universe, both the main course of everything that science

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Speaker 1: has unraveled about the way the universe works and our

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Speaker 1: mysterious cosmos operates, as well as the spicy side dish

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Speaker 1: of confusion of everything that we don't yet understand about

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Speaker 1: the universe. It's a delicious place to live and to

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Speaker 1: be curious and just to wonder. About how everything works.

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Speaker 1: It's right. We serve up bowls folds of amazing signs

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Speaker 1: here talking about the universe and the cosmos and everything,

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Speaker 1: and it ready for you to scoop up and feed

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Speaker 1: your mind and your soul with amazing knowledge about everything

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Speaker 1: that is. And as we chew on that everything we

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Speaker 1: understand and don't about the universe, you might wonder, why

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Speaker 1: does the universe taste this way and not some other way.

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Speaker 1: Is it possible for the universe to have been different

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Speaker 1: if we ran the whole experiment again from the Big Bang,

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Speaker 1: would we end up with basically the same thing, or

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Speaker 1: where there's some random twists and turns that determined the

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Speaker 1: fate of our universe? And might have said it on

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Speaker 1: another course, Yeah, it is a very peculiar universe, pretty interesting,

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Speaker 1: and especially because of the fact that we're in it,

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Speaker 1: we had a lot of spice to the universe, I think,

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Speaker 1: and so you got to wonder if the universe was

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Speaker 1: any different, would we still be here. It's a deep

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Speaker 1: question of philosophy and one that's inspired by specific discoveries

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Speaker 1: we've made about particle physics. As we look out at

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Speaker 1: the universe and pull it apart and try to understand

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Speaker 1: what it's little bits are and how they work. We

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Speaker 1: notice a lot of sort of specific details about how

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Speaker 1: things work. Particles have these specific masses, They follow all

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Speaker 1: these very specific rules, and we don't always understand why

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Speaker 1: they follow those rules or have those particular values or interactions,

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Speaker 1: and whether those things are arbitrary or if they have

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Speaker 1: to be that way. Yeah, if it seems like the

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Speaker 1: universe is the way it is because of some random reason,

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Speaker 1: I guess you got to wonder, like, what if it

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Speaker 1: was different? What if the universe looked and felt and

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Speaker 1: worked in a slightly different way? Would there still be

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Speaker 1: food trucks? There will always be food trucks. I think

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Speaker 1: their inevitability of evolution, well, they only became hipp and

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Speaker 1: popular maybe like ten years ago. I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: don't go out often enough to know what's hip and

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Speaker 1: popular on the streets. But I think it's an extension

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Speaker 1: of a question everybody asks themselves. I mean, we know

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Speaker 1: that the probability of you in particular being here is tiny,

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Speaker 1: just for like the chances of your parents having met

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Speaker 1: and coming together at just the moment for you to

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Speaker 1: be born is astronomical. On top of that the probability

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Speaker 1: for humans to have evolved and for Earth to have formed,

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Speaker 1: and for our galaxy to be right here. On top

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Speaker 1: of all of that stuff is an even deeper layer

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Speaker 1: of questioning about reality, about whether the very rules of

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Speaker 1: the universe have to be this way and whether they

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Speaker 1: could be another way. Add that to the probabilities for

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Speaker 1: you to exist, and the whole thing its dwarfs you.

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Speaker 1: It makes you feel like you are so unlikely. It's

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Speaker 1: amazing that you're here. It is amazing that we're here.

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Speaker 1: Although I do try to think about the moment of

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Speaker 1: my conception the least amount possible. That's something I'd like

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Speaker 1: to put a lot of thought in. But it is

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Speaker 1: interesting to think about the conception of the universe and

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Speaker 1: how it came to be and what made it the

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Speaker 1: way it is right now. Yeah, and something we know

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Speaker 1: very little about. We've discovered all these rules that particles follow,

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Speaker 1: but we don't know if those values are set randomly,

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Speaker 1: as you suggested, or if there's some deeper set of

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Speaker 1: rules that requires them to have these values. It's just

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Speaker 1: the only universe we've ever studied, and so we don't

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Speaker 1: have other examples to inform us and so to the

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Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question would the

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Speaker 1: universe be different with a zero Higgs feel I would

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Speaker 1: certainly be involved in fewer Nobel Prize winning discoveries. Wait

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Speaker 1: what do you mean, Well, just in the sense that

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't be here if the Higgs field was zero.

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Speaker 1: I see, that's right. Yeah, the discovery of the or

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Speaker 1: I guess, the confirmation of the Higgs field, and the

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Speaker 1: discovery the Higgs boson that won a Nobel Prize, and

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Speaker 1: you were sort of involved in that project, right, I

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Speaker 1: was involved in the project from the experimental side, like

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Speaker 1: we demonstrated the Higgs field is there, and we produced

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Speaker 1: the Higgs boson and saw it and studied it. We

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Speaker 1: of course didn't win the Nobel Prize for that. Our

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Speaker 1: discovery confirmed the theoretical ideas, and those theorists all won

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Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for it. Though there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of really interesting sort of political jockeying for the Nobel Prize.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if everybody out there appreciates sort of

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Speaker 1: like how personal and political the process of choosing people

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Speaker 1: for the Nobel Prize is. There's some really interesting stories there.

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Speaker 1: I think we all appreciate some gossip bill the beans

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Speaker 1: who backstaff who with the Nobel Prize in the living room. Well,

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Speaker 1: the issue is that they can give the Nobel Prize

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Speaker 1: to up to three people. That's of course the rule

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Speaker 1: from Nobel's will, and so everybody knew Higgs was going

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Speaker 1: to be on the list, but the question was who

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Speaker 1: else got a share of the Nobel Prize? And there

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Speaker 1: were two other folks that were sort of high in

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Speaker 1: the running, but then one of them passed away before

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Speaker 1: we actually discovered the Higgs field suspiciously that it so

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Speaker 1: sucks this is not a true crime podcast. Or maybe

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Speaker 1: it could be. What were the circumstances of this person's

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Speaker 1: to mice. We're not going to dig into that, but

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Speaker 1: it did leave an opening because you cannot win the

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize posthumously. If you pass away, you can't win it.

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Speaker 1: So there was a third slot there, and it wasn't

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Speaker 1: clear who should get that third slot. So all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, all the theorists who had been involved in

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Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson theoretical frameworks started giving a bunch of

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Speaker 1: seminars about their role in these pivotal developments, essentially campaigning

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Speaker 1: for that third spot. Oh, I thought you were going

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Speaker 1: to say that all the scientists involved in the Higgs

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Speaker 1: discovery suddenly started to mysteriously disappear and pass away. No,

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Speaker 1: this is not a true crime podcast. It's also not

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Speaker 1: a paranormal activities podcas cast. They didn't all like disappear

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Speaker 1: into ghosts or anything like that. But you know, when

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Speaker 1: everybody realized, oh, this sort of a third slot available

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Speaker 1: for who's going to share the Nobel Prize for the

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson, a lot of people started to publicly make

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Speaker 1: the case that they should get that third share. Wow,

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Speaker 1: Like like they put out ad saying, like, for your

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Speaker 1: consideration for best supporting scientists in a Higgs field discovery.

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Speaker 1: It's exactly the particle physics version of that. People started

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Speaker 1: putting paper ons in the archive, you know, a historical

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Speaker 1: retrospective on the discovery of the Higgs boson, highlighting their

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Speaker 1: role in it, for example, giving a lot of public

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Speaker 1: talks about this kind of stuff, you know, sort of

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Speaker 1: wink wink, not not remember I'm very important because in

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Speaker 1: the end, the Nobel Prize is decided by people, for

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Speaker 1: people about people. It's political like everything else. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: I bet if the scientists suddenly started disappearing or dying

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Speaker 1: under mysterious syncretest and fewer people would put their names

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Speaker 1: out there. I don't know, maybe it would make it

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Speaker 1: even more mysterious and attractive to people. Well, there's not

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Speaker 1: a true crime podcast, is a true science podcast. But

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Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting to think about the Higgs

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Speaker 1: Boson discovery and how significant it was. Right because discovering

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Speaker 1: the Higgs field sort of confirm the last bit of

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Speaker 1: the standard model, which is the part that gives things mass.

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Speaker 1: It's really an incredible punctuation mark on a centuries long story.

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Speaker 1: You know, when Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism, it was

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Speaker 1: an incredible moment in theoretical physics because it took two

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Speaker 1: pieces of mathematics and recognized it like both of them

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Speaker 1: were incomplete, but in complementary ways. It's like he saw

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Speaker 1: two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and realized that one's

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Speaker 1: fit perfectly inside the other. That was beautiful. But then

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Speaker 1: Higgs a hundred years later realized that this new joint

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Speaker 1: piece electricity magnetism fit perfectly with the weak force in

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Speaker 1: exactly the same way, except there was one piece missing,

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Speaker 1: so he was able to join these things together and

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Speaker 1: recognize like the outline of a new missing piece, which

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Speaker 1: of course is the Higgs field, which we then discovered.

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Speaker 1: So it's a really an incredible story of how like

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Speaker 1: mathematics has shown us the path to insight into the

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Speaker 1: very nature of the universe. Yeah, no, for sure. I

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Speaker 1: mean where would physics be without mass? I mean you

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Speaker 1: kind of owe everything to that, right, and also engineers

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Speaker 1: to make your experiments. Yeah, and cooks and plumbers and

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Speaker 1: everything else, and food trucks. We stand on the shoulders

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Speaker 1: of basically everybody. Yeah, it is an amazing discovery and

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Speaker 1: the end of a long road of exploring what the

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Speaker 1: universe is made out of. But like you said, it's

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Speaker 1: so significant this Higgs field because it sort of gives

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Speaker 1: things mass, or at least that's the common perception of it.

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Speaker 1: That it kind of makes you wonder, like what would

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Speaker 1: happen if there was no Higgs field, or the Higgs

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Speaker 1: field was zero. Yeah, because the Higgs field is different

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Speaker 1: from every other field we have found. You, the electron field,

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Speaker 1: the photon field, the cork fields, all these are fields

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Speaker 1: that fill space. They can like wiggle in ways that

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Speaker 1: we see as particles. But the Higgs field is different

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Speaker 1: from all of those fields because it has so much

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Speaker 1: more energy, sort of like stuck inside of it instead

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Speaker 1: of relaxing down zero like everything else did when the

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Speaker 1: universe cooled. It's sort of like got stuck on a shelf,

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Speaker 1: and that really changes the very nature of our universe.

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Speaker 1: M Yeah, Well, in this podcast, we'd like to ask

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Speaker 1: a lot of what if questions, right, Daniel, I think

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Speaker 1: we've had episodes about like what if the Earth's gravity

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Speaker 1: suddenly turned off? Or what if we didn't have electrons? Right?

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Speaker 1: Big questions about how the universe might or could be different. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: These are fundamental games, not only because it lets us

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Speaker 1: think about other universes and what they might be like,

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Speaker 1: but because it helps us understand the role of everything,

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Speaker 1: how they all come together to make the symphony of

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Speaker 1: our reality. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can ask, like,

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Speaker 1: what would life be like without food trucks? And that

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Speaker 1: kind of tells you a little bit more about how

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Speaker 1: significant Yeah, if you can even call that living? What's

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Speaker 1: life without tacos? That say? Yet? Right? Probably healthier actually

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Speaker 1: longer and healthier? Well do they were asking the question

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Speaker 1: of whether the universe would be different and how it

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Speaker 1: would it be different if the Higgs field were zero,

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Speaker 1: if that big discovery had never occurred, or even go

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Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the universe, what if the

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Speaker 1: universe started without a Higgs field? And so, as usual,

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Speaker 1: we were wondering how many people out there had thought

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Speaker 1: be like. So thanks very much to everybody who volunteered

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Speaker 1: for this segment of the podcast. We really enjoy hearing

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Speaker 1: your thoughts, and we'd like to hear your thoughts. In particular,

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Speaker 1: we're talking to you, a listener who has never volunteered.

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Speaker 1: Please don't be shy right to us two questions at

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it for

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Speaker 1: a second. What do you think would happen if the

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Speaker 1: universe's Higgs field was zero? It's what people had to say.

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Speaker 1: So I only know about the Higgs field through your show,

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Speaker 1: and I only think I heard it once or twice,

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Speaker 1: so I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing it's some

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Speaker 1: kind of energy, and if it was zero, I'm guessing

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Speaker 1: the universe would be nothing. If the Higgs field was zero,

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Speaker 1: then I guess we will be all as soup of energy. Well,

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Speaker 1: I do know that the Higgs field is responsible for

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Speaker 1: giving particles mass, and without it, then particles in the

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Speaker 1: universe would not feel the effects of gravity if they

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Speaker 1: didn't have mass, and without the effects of gravity, things

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Speaker 1: wouldn't clump together. So you know, we wouldn't have stars,

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't have galaxies. I guess after the Big Bang

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Speaker 1: it would be just the soup. I think this has

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Speaker 1: something to do with false vacuum and the destruction of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Given that the Higgs boson is responsible for

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Speaker 1: giving particles mass, my assumption is that if the Higgs

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Speaker 1: field was zero, then it would be not possible for

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Speaker 1: particles to have mass, and therefore gravitational effects would not

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Speaker 1: work in a universe where Higgs field is zero. Well,

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Speaker 1: if I understand it right, the Higgs field transfers mass

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Speaker 1: to particles, So if it didn't do that, the particles

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Speaker 1: would have no mass, which means they wouldn't attract each

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Speaker 1: other and it would just be fly around the speed

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Speaker 1: of light. So I guess the universe would just be

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Speaker 1: like a big mist. I mean, there would be no clumping,

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Speaker 1: there would be no aggregation. Everything would just be like

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Speaker 1: flying around and would just be like a big fog,

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Speaker 1: or even not just nothing because there's no mass, there's

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Speaker 1: no attraction. So I think if the Higgs field were zero,

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Speaker 1: the universe would either look incredibly boring and nothing could

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Speaker 1: or would happen, or the opposite, that the universe would

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Speaker 1: become incredibly chaotic and out of control very quickly, rather

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Speaker 1: like a maths class on these substitute maths teachers first day.

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Speaker 1: I guess the Higgs field is that thing that gives

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Speaker 1: stuff mass, So if there is no way to have mass,

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Speaker 1: there would be essentially no gravity. I guess things would

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Speaker 1: probably be very smooth then, not clumped together as much.

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Speaker 1: All right, not a lot of happy answers here. Nobody

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Speaker 1: wants to live in that universe. It sounds like I'm

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Speaker 1: just disappointed. Nobody said that without the Higgs field you

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Speaker 1: couldn't get Higgie with it. Would we even have will

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Speaker 1: Smith without the Higgs field? Right, that's the big question.

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Speaker 1: It'd be like a slap in the face to the

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Speaker 1: universe too soon. All right, he's the fresh prince of

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Speaker 1: particle physics after all. Well, this is an interesting question.

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Speaker 1: What would the universe be like or would the universe

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Speaker 1: be different if the Higgs field were zero. So let's

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Speaker 1: dig into this question, Daniel. We talked a little bit

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Speaker 1: about the Higgs boson and the discovery, but how do

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Speaker 1: physicists define the Higgs field? How can we understand what

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Speaker 1: it is? Our modern concept of like what space is

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Speaker 1: from a quantum mechanical perspective, involves basically a bunch of

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Speaker 1: quantum fields. So imagine empty space out there. It's never

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Speaker 1: really empty when a particle moves through that space. It's

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Speaker 1: really just like a ripple in some quantum field. And

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Speaker 1: these quantum fields fill the whole universe. There's one for

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Speaker 1: every kind of particle that's out there. The deepest question

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Speaker 1: is like why do we have these fields? Why do

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Speaker 1: they exist? How many different kind of fields are there?

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Speaker 1: And the answer is we just don't know. We've observed

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Speaker 1: these fields, we've found them. We've been able to describe

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Speaker 1: them mathematically using wave equations, so we think they wiggle

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Speaker 1: the same way that like water in your bathtub wiggles,

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Speaker 1: or in a similar way at least, And so the

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Speaker 1: name of the game is like hunting out these fields.

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Speaker 1: How many fields are there? And the Higgs field is

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Speaker 1: just one of those fields. That's out there, but it's

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Speaker 1: also quite different from the other fields. You know, particles

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Speaker 1: which are excitations of the Higgs field don't have any spin,

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Speaker 1: which makes them very different from every other kind of

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Speaker 1: particle we have seen. Electrons and photons, they all have

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Speaker 1: some kind of spin. Higgs bosons don't have any spin.

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Speaker 1: But just to maybe clarify for people, you say, there

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Speaker 1: are other fields, and basically, like we're wiggles and fields, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: every particle out there, including the ones that we're made

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Speaker 1: out of, are there because there are fields for it, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: there's an electric field that perme it's the entire universe,

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Speaker 1: and that's where electrons come from. But it's also the

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Speaker 1: same for like quarks, right quarks with makeup protons and neutrinos.

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Speaker 1: Everything has a field. Basically, that's right, Exactly, every particle

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Speaker 1: is just a ripple in this field, and that sort

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Speaker 1: of like unifies all the particles. Like you might think

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Speaker 1: about one electron and another electron that's totally separate particles,

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Speaker 1: you can also think of them as two different ripples

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Speaker 1: in the same field. There's one electron field that fills

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Speaker 1: the whole universe and the whole concept of a field

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Speaker 1: might sound sort of weird and abstract and hard to

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Speaker 1: get your head around, but it's really just like a

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Speaker 1: number for every point in space. Everywhere in space you

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Speaker 1: can have a number, and maybe that number is zero

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Speaker 1: or maybe that number is ten. Right in this case,

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Speaker 1: it's like the value of the field, and as you

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Speaker 1: put energy into that field, it can oscillate and wiggle

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Speaker 1: in a way that looks like a particle. Also, all

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Speaker 1: of space is like embedded with all of these quantum fields. Again,

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Speaker 1: we don't know why. This is just our description of

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Speaker 1: the universe we have observed, and the Higgs field is

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Speaker 1: different from all of those fields because it interacts with

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Speaker 1: those fields in a special way. It connects with them

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Speaker 1: and changes how particles move through the other fields in

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Speaker 1: just the way so as to make those fields look

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Speaker 1: like they have mass. So the electron flies through the universe,

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Speaker 1: but it also interacts with the Higgs field, and that

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Speaker 1: changes how the electron particle moves through its field in

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Speaker 1: just the same way as if the electron itself had mass.

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Speaker 1: So the Higgs field sort of changes what we think

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Speaker 1: mass is instead of like the amount of stuff and

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Speaker 1: a little particle that we think of. It it's like

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Speaker 1: how strongly the Higgs field changes how those ripples move

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Speaker 1: through other fields. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: I sit down and I, you know, can imagine my

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Speaker 1: body and all the atoms that my hands and my

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Speaker 1: arms and my legs are made out of. Pretty amazing

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Speaker 1: to imagine each one of those atoms as being, you know,

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Speaker 1: a collection of electrons. Each of those electrons it's just

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Speaker 1: being like little ripples, like little wiggles in some sort

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Speaker 1: of universe field. It's pretty tribute to think about. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it connects you with all the other electrons in

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Speaker 1: the universe, right, you know, like why are all electrons

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Speaker 1: the same really? Because they're all just ripples in the

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Speaker 1: same field. It's like we're all sharing one huge blanket,

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Speaker 1: you know, instead of having our own little blankets. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're all connected, man. But then you're saying, the Higgs

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Speaker 1: field is another field that is all around this, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't make up matter, does it, Like it Like,

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Speaker 1: there's no stuff mean out of Higgs bosons. So a

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Speaker 1: lot of the fields create particles that are stable, like

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Speaker 1: the electron field. You can have stuff that just sits there,

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Speaker 1: and the electron can sit there for an infinite amount

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Speaker 1: of time and just exist. The Higgs field can also

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Speaker 1: create particles, So the Higgs boson is what happens when

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Speaker 1: you excite the Higgs field and you get a particle,

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Speaker 1: but that particle isn't stable, Like, if you have a

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson sitting in empty space, it will very quickly

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Speaker 1: turn into other particles. So there's no stable matter made

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Speaker 1: out of Higgs bosons. So yeah, you can't like build

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Speaker 1: stuff out of Higgs bosons because it'll just fall apart. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So then the Higgs field is there, and you're saying

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Speaker 1: that it's sort of main effect is that it gives

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Speaker 1: other particles from other fields the feeling of mass, right,

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Speaker 1: or behavior that feels like mass, and specifically the idea

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Speaker 1: of mass as it relates to movement. Right, Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about inertial mass here. We're talking about how much

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Speaker 1: force it takes to get something to accelerate. Right, force

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Speaker 1: equals mass times acceleration. What that mass term really means.

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Speaker 1: It tells you how to relate the force and the acceleration.

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Speaker 1: How much of a force do you need in order

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Speaker 1: to get something to accelerate if you're pushing on the Earth,

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Speaker 1: it has a huge mass. It takes a really big force.

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Speaker 1: If you're pushing on a leaf as a tiny mass,

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Speaker 1: so a little force can give you a pretty good acceleration.

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Speaker 1: So that's the mass we're talking about. And where does

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Speaker 1: that mass come from, We don't really know. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of like a measure of how much energy is stored

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Speaker 1: inside something. So particles kind of energy stored inside of

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Speaker 1: them because they interact with the Higgs field. Like the

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Speaker 1: electron is truly at its core a massless particle, but

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Speaker 1: it interacts with the Higgs field and that gives it

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Speaker 1: this like internal stored energy, which gives it inertia. And

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Speaker 1: that's what we call mass. That's what we call mass

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Speaker 1: due to the Higgs field, Right, And so like the

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Speaker 1: Earth is really massive and if I try to push

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Speaker 1: in it, it'd be really hard to get it to move.

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Speaker 1: And so that's an effect of the Higgs field. It's

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Speaker 1: like it's trying to push the Earth, but the Higgs

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Speaker 1: field is saying like, no, this thing has a lot

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Speaker 1: of mass. I'm not going to let it move a lot. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right, but remember, as you just pointed out, the

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Speaker 1: Higgs field is one way things can get mass. Mass

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Speaker 1: is really just a measure of internal stored energy. So

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Speaker 1: if you take for example, a proton, the particles that

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Speaker 1: make it up, the quarks, they do have some mass

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Speaker 1: from the Higgs field, but most of the mass of

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Speaker 1: the proton is from its other internal stored energy, from

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Speaker 1: the bonds between those quarks, which come from the gluons.

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Speaker 1: So most of the mass the proton and the neutron

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Speaker 1: and therefore you and me and the Earth doesn't actually

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Speaker 1: come from the Higgs field. It comes from the internal

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Speaker 1: stored energy and protons and neutrons. It comes from the

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Speaker 1: strong force. So there's lots of different ways to get

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Speaker 1: internal stored energy, and the Higgs field is one of them.

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Speaker 1: M So, wait, So, like a proton has a lot

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Speaker 1: of mass because of the energy that binds the quarks

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Speaker 1: in it, and that is somehow what makes it hard

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Speaker 1: to move through the universe. Is there a mechanism for that?

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Speaker 1: That's not something we understand very well. Like why do

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Speaker 1: things have inertia when they have energy inside of them?

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Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of weird to think about. Like

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Speaker 1: you take a box that has no mass and you

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Speaker 1: put photons inside of it, and those photons have no mass,

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Speaker 1: But now that you've stored those photons inside the box,

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Speaker 1: the box now has mass because you have internal stored energy.

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Speaker 1: So you can put massless stuff inside a massless box

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Speaker 1: and get a massive box. Mass is a really weird thing.

431
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:42,240
Speaker 1: It's this property a stored energy that it has inertia,

432
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 1: and the stored inertia kind of mask doesn't have anything

433
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:47,720
Speaker 1: to do with the Higgs field, is what you're saying.

434
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:50,520
Speaker 1: The Higgs field only kind of affects the mass of

435
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:54,920
Speaker 1: individual particles. Yeah, it's one way you can store energy

436
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 1: inside a particle, Like electron has internal stored energy due

437
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 1: to its interactions with the Higgs field. It's like using

438
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,440
Speaker 1: the energy of the Higgs field and capturing a little

439
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 1: bit of that energy, and that's what gives it some inertia.

440
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:09,640
Speaker 1: But yeah, most of the sort of internal stored energy

441
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 1: of a proton and neutron doesn't come from the Higgs field.

442
00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:15,520
Speaker 1: So like if I have a proton which has quarks

443
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:18,119
Speaker 1: in it, most of the mass of a proton is

444
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,280
Speaker 1: not due to the Higgs field then, like only a

445
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:22,320
Speaker 1: very little amount of it. So I guess that makes

446
00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:24,639
Speaker 1: you wonder if the Higgs field or zero, would it

447
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:28,080
Speaker 1: even matter. Would it change really the mass of a

448
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:30,959
Speaker 1: proton and everything how everything else works in the universe.

449
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:33,560
Speaker 1: Let's get into that question what does it mean for

450
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:37,120
Speaker 1: the universe and for food trucks everywhere? But first let's

451
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:52,080
Speaker 1: take a quick break or I we're playing what if,

452
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 1: which is a pretty popular genre. I feel like right now,

453
00:23:56,359 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: have you seen that what If show on Disney Plus?

454
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 1: In some of that show? And I've read Random Rose too,

455
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:05,840
Speaker 1: excellent what if books, So there's a lot of fun

456
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: what if out there. Yeah, so we're asking what if

457
00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: the Higgs field were zero? What if we instead of

458
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: a universe where the Higgs field wasn't zero, we lived

459
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 1: in a universe where the Higgs field was zero zero

460
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 1: or like gone altogether. And we're talking about if it

461
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:23,359
Speaker 1: were zero rather than if it were gone altogether. Is

462
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:25,119
Speaker 1: you know one thing the other fields can do is

463
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 1: they can relax down to basically almost zero, Like you

464
00:24:28,119 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 1: can have space but basically no electrons in it. Right.

465
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: That means the electron field is going down to its

466
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 1: minimum value. Of course, it's a quantum field, so it's

467
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:39,320
Speaker 1: always going to have some energy stored in it. Maybe

468
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: you can break that down for us a little bit

469
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 1: like what does it mean for a field to be

470
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 1: zero or not zero or to have energy in it?

471
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:48,359
Speaker 1: Like it's a fields, it's something that's not substantial, is it?

472
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 1: Is it field? Something substantial? Is sort of a big

473
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: question in philosophy, like our field's even real or are

474
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 1: they just sort of a calculation we do in our

475
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: heads to try to make predictions from experiments we don't know,

476
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 1: And that could be a whole our little digression. But

477
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: the way the fields work mathematically is that you just

478
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: sort of think of them as a number or in

479
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,640
Speaker 1: some cases a vector at every point in space, and

480
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: that field can have energy, which means that that number

481
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 1: can be moving. So fields can have like kinetic energy

482
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 1: if they wiggle, like the value of the field is

483
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: going up and down. They can also have potential energy

484
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: based on the different kind of field that it is,

485
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: and so the points in space can sort of be oscillating,

486
00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:28,400
Speaker 1: like the value of the field can be changing, and

487
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,240
Speaker 1: wiggles in the field like that are sort of coherent.

488
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: Because of the way the field works, it follows the

489
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 1: wave equation that energy sort of propagates through the field

490
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 1: in a coherent way, which is why like a little

491
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,880
Speaker 1: packet of energy can move through the field and sort

492
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: of stay together. An electron can move across the universe

493
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 1: carrying that packet of energy and not like dissipating out

494
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: into the universe. So like if you say like a

495
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 1: field has energy, means it has kind of like a

496
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: wiggle to it, like it's pulsating in a way, like

497
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: it's not standing still. Yeah, exactly, its pulsating. And because

498
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 1: these are quantum fields, they have to wiggle in very

499
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: discrete ways. Like you can have one electron or two

500
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: electrons or seven electrons. You can't have one point seven

501
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: one electrons, right, because it's a quantum field, which means

502
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: it's quantized, which means it has like a ladder of

503
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: possible states, not an infinite spectrum. The same way you

504
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: can have like one photon or seven photons, but you

505
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,479
Speaker 1: can't have one and a half photon. That's because the

506
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,160
Speaker 1: field knows how to wiggle in some ways, the same

507
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: way of like a guitar string. You know, it can

508
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: wiggle at some notes. It can't wiggle at arbitrary notes

509
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:34,160
Speaker 1: because of how you cut off the ends of it. Well,

510
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: you haven't seen me play a guitar. I can make

511
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:38,959
Speaker 1: all kinds of horrible sounds and a guitar. I keep

512
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:41,399
Speaker 1: waiting for the first public show of your dad band.

513
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the grateful dads, shout out to my bandmates again. So,

514
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 1: if the fields can have energy to them, and you're

515
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:51,399
Speaker 1: saying that the Higgs field has some energy to it,

516
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 1: whereas all the other fields have zero energy, like the

517
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: electron field, does it have some energy to it? The

518
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: electron field and all the other fields have relaxed it

519
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: down to very low values, essentially down to zero. Remember,

520
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: the history of the universe is one where we are

521
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,360
Speaker 1: cooling down. We started out very hot and dense. It

522
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: was like the center of the sun, lots of energy,

523
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 1: and all the fields they're all frothing around to the

524
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:15,360
Speaker 1: point where you can't even really think about particles, more

525
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: like an ocean rather than droplets of water. But as

526
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,439
Speaker 1: the universe expands, then the energy decreases, it gets diluted

527
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: and things cool down, and now we're in a sort

528
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: of very old, very cold phase of the universe where

529
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,199
Speaker 1: the fields are mostly zero everywhere. So everything sort of

530
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: like relaxed down to about zero. But the Higgs field didn't.

531
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: When the universe was cooling down, the Higgs field got

532
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: stuck in sort of like a local minimum. You know,

533
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: things tend to like to flow down to low potential

534
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 1: energy the way like water will flow down to the

535
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 1: bottom of a valley. But if you have a little

536
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: lip there there's like a little divot in the rock,

537
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: the water will get trapped in that little divot. And

538
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: that's how you get like, you know, lakes at ten

539
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: thousand feet up in the mountains because the little valley

540
00:27:57,320 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: there that traps it. The Higgs field when it was relaxing,

541
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 1: got stuck in one of those little valleys and it's

542
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 1: still there. Well, I guess maybe my question is, like

543
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: when these fields relax at the beginning of the universe,

544
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,119
Speaker 1: like where did that energy go? Like is it because

545
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:14,360
Speaker 1: the universe expanded and things got spread out or did

546
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,879
Speaker 1: that energy like go into making electrons or matter? What

547
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: causes a field to like lose its energy. So it's

548
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:22,959
Speaker 1: just because the universe is expanding and so things are

549
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: getting more dilute, So the energy just gets more spread out.

550
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: So instead of having a lot of energy in a

551
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 1: small amount of space, now you have the same energy

552
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: and more space, and so things are just colder and

553
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: more spread out and matter gets diluted. As space increases

554
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: by like one over distance cubed or have same amount

555
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: of energy in the matter and now more volume radiation

556
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: things like photons gets deluded even more because it's not

557
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: just that space gets bigger you have like more volume

558
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: with the same amount of energy, but the actual photons

559
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: themselves get red shifted, so they cool down even faster

560
00:28:58,160 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 1: than the matter. So as the time goes on from

561
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: the universe, you have like a radiation dominated portion in

562
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: the very early universe, and then that radiation falls off

563
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: very quickly and then the matter cools down. Now we're

564
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: actually at a time in the universe where we're dark

565
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: energy dominated, where most of the energy in the universe

566
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:16,959
Speaker 1: is not in radiation or in matter, and that's just

567
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: because of the expansion of the universe. So when the

568
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: universe stretched out, all these fields kind of relax or

569
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: they got stretched I guess they got kind of stretched out,

570
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 1: kind of like you would stretch out a guitar string,

571
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: right like it would lose some of the energy. But

572
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: somehow the Higgs field didn't lose some of that energy.

573
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: You're saying, like, somehow the Higgs field got stuck with

574
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 1: some energy, but it must have also expanded with the

575
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: rest of the universe, So why didn't the Higgs field

576
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: lose that energy with the expansion. So the Higgs field

577
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: is different from the other fields in the structure. It's

578
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: like potential energy. It has a strange sort of potential

579
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: energy function, has this double dip in it. We have

580
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: a whole podcast episode about how the Higgs gets mass

581
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: and its potential energy. We could spend a whole half

582
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: hour on that, but it's sufficient to know that the

583
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: Higgs field likes to relax in different ways than the

584
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: other field. So it has not just like a potential

585
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: minimum at zero, it has another potential minimum at a

586
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: higher value. So where it's like the other fields, you

587
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: can think of them as a simple valley where water

588
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: would flow down to the bottom. The Higgs field is different.

589
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: It has this like extra little double dips of the

590
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: water gets stuck at a higher place and can't make

591
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: it all the way down to the bottom. It sounds

592
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: like the Higgs field doesn't know how to relax, maybe

593
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: needs to take some meditation classes or something. Well, you

594
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: don't want the Higgs field to chill out, because the

595
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: universe would be very different if it did. I see

596
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: you like the Higgs beans stressed out. I like the

597
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: universe the way it is, even if that means the

598
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: Higgs is kind of tense. I guess we could talk

599
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: about like how what the Higgs field doesn't relax, But

600
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 1: the point is that the Higgs field doesn't relax, and

601
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: so it has some kind of energy right now, and

602
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: it's that energy where our mass comes the massive small

603
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: particles comes from. The energy is exactly where the mass

604
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: of small particles comes from. Like the electron without the

605
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: Higgs field would be massless travel at the speed of light,

606
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: you would have no mass. But because the Higgs is there,

607
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: the electron interacts with it, and that changes the way

608
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: the electron moves because it now has this internal energy

609
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: from its interaction with the Higgs field. The interaction, as

610
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: you say, it comes from the energy of the Higgs field. Well,

611
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Like, can you maybe explain it

612
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: to us, Like it has energy and somehow it gives

613
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: that energy too particles to make them slower, or because

614
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 1: it has energy, it caused particles more to move through space.

615
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: What's the connection there? So every kind of particle that

616
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 1: we know about, like the electron and the quarks. There's

617
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: actually two different versions of them. We call them the

618
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 1: left handed version and the right handed version. And this

619
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: has to do with whether their spin is pointed in

620
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: the same direction they're moving or not. We've talked about

621
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: it on the podcast several times. You can think about

622
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: as chirality or helicity, but there's basically two different versions

623
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: of every particle, the left handed and the right handed version.

624
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: And what the Higgs can do is it can turn

625
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: a left handed version into a right handed version. So

626
00:31:57,840 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: you have like a left handed electron flying through space,

627
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: the Higgs can turn it into a right handed version,

628
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: and then back and forth right. So that's what the

629
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: Higgs can do, and this is happening trillions of times

630
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: per second. If you have a particle flying through space,

631
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: it's like going back and forth. What So I have

632
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 1: an electron in space, it's spinning one way and the

633
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: Higgs flips it around. Is that what you're saying, Yes, exactly.

634
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 1: The Higgs can flip a left handed electron into a

635
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: right handed electron like it knocks it, like it hits it.

636
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 1: It just makes the spin unstable. What's a good way

637
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 1: to visualize it? Or think about why that happens. So

638
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: just because it's a tense and stressed out it likes

639
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: to slap electrons around. The way to think about it

640
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: is that if the universe can do something, then it happens.

641
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: Was So when a left handed electron if flying through space,

642
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: it can use the Higgs boson to convert into a

643
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: right handed electron. It's a possibility, just the same way

644
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 1: an electron can radiate a photon. And so if electron

645
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: is flying through the universe long enough, then it will happen.

646
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:02,959
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing electrons do. They do

647
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: everything that they are allowed to do. All the possibilities

648
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: eventually come to reality. And so left handed electrons can

649
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: convert to right handed electrons and back and forth, and

650
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson is what's required to do this. And

651
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: so essentially the electron that we know and love, what

652
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: we call the electron, is actually this like combination of

653
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: the left handed electron and the right hand electron combined

654
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:29,000
Speaker 1: with the Higgs boson. You need the Higgs boson there

655
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: to glue them together. So the electron that we know

656
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 1: is sort of like a mishmash of the left handed electron,

657
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: the right handed electron with the Higgs boson there to

658
00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: glue them together into this massive particle. The left handed

659
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: electron the right hand electron by themselves neither of them

660
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: have mass, but the way they move to the universe

661
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: constantly flip flapping back and forth using the Higgs boson.

662
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 1: The overall motion of that thing is something that has

663
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: energy and moves like a particle with mass. You mean,

664
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: like the Higgs boson is what causes it to flip

665
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: back and forth, and because it's flipping back and forth,

666
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: it makes it harder to move somehow, and then that's

667
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 1: where where the mask comes from. Yeah, precisely. The way

668
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:12,919
Speaker 1: you can think about, like photons flying through empty space

669
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:15,120
Speaker 1: go at the speed of light, but photons flying through

670
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: material they have to stop and interact with all those atoms,

671
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: so there's zig zagging back and forth, and the effective

672
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: speed of that photon is lower than the speed of

673
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 1: light in a vacuum. An electron moving through space is

674
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: interacting with the Higgs field and doing that gives it mass.

675
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 1: It doesn't slow it down. It's a different kind of interaction.

676
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,479
Speaker 1: It changes its internal stored energy, makes this new sort

677
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: of effective particle not a composite particle. It's not like

678
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about how the proton has quarks inside of it.

679
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,240
Speaker 1: We're not saying the electron literally has a left handed

680
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,319
Speaker 1: and right handed particle inside them which click together. This

681
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: is like a new elementary particle that is made of

682
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:58,399
Speaker 1: these interactions. Where you're saying an electron, it's not really

683
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 1: an electron, like an electron is really to half electrons. Well,

684
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: I'm saying the electron that we know and love and

685
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,480
Speaker 1: then we eat in our cereal every morning is different

686
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:08,440
Speaker 1: from the kinds of electrons we would have in the

687
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 1: universe without the Higgs boson. So without the Higgs boson,

688
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:13,920
Speaker 1: not only would all these particles be massless, but they

689
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: would all be split into their left and right handed versions.

690
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: And the same is true of every other particle. Not split,

691
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: but like each particle would have to decide if it

692
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: was spinning one way or the other, and they would

693
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 1: stay that way. Yes, exactly, they would stay that way

694
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,160
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't convert. So left handed electrons would fly

695
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: through the universe massless at the speed of light and

696
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: not like flip flop back and forth to right handed electrons.

697
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: So I'm an electron in the universe. I'm sitting here

698
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: or flying around and I'm pointing one way, but because

699
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: the Higgs field is there, the Higgs field is like, hey,

700
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:48,400
Speaker 1: here's some energy, I guess, or here's a mechanism for

701
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: you to flip back and forth, and so why not

702
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: I flip back and forth one hundred trillion trillion times

703
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 1: per second. Yeah, So the top cork is more massive.

704
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 1: It flips back and forth more often than the electron,

705
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: which has less mass than the top quark. And that's

706
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:05,040
Speaker 1: why top quarks have more mass, because they're more affected

707
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,320
Speaker 1: by the Higgs boson. It couples to them more tightly,

708
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 1: it does this flip flopping back and forth more often.

709
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,840
Speaker 1: And it just so happens that this flip flopping effect

710
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: is sort of related to how it moves through the

711
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: universe in a way that it feels like it has inersion. Exactly.

712
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:22,439
Speaker 1: You do the calculation for all these interactions, and you say,

713
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: what is it like for this particle to move? And

714
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: you get exactly the same effect as if you had

715
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: an elementary particle that really had mass on its own,

716
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: if it was just like a property of that particle,

717
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: you get exactly the same equations of motion. So these

718
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:39,839
Speaker 1: two massless particles flip flopping back and forth between each other,

719
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 1: moving exactly the same way as if you had an

720
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:46,200
Speaker 1: elementary particle with its own mass. And so it's all

721
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: due to this kind of unrelaxed energy that the Higgs

722
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: field has. And so I guess now we can ask

723
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: a question like what if that field was zero, Like

724
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 1: what if the universe had a Higgs field that was

725
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: able to relax that maybe meditated it's a medication perhaps

726
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: chilled out and went to zero. Right, that's the kind

727
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: of the question we're asking today. And so the sort

728
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: of three big effects Number one is that all these

729
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 1: particles would be split. Instead of having left and right

730
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:17,839
Speaker 1: handed particles sort of merged together into the particles we know,

731
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,479
Speaker 1: we'd have separate versions of everything as we just talked about.

732
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: So the top left and top right would be different

733
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: particles instead of being combined together into the massive top sandwich. Wait,

734
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Like it would still be separate particles,

735
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: they just kind of wouldn't be flipping back and forth. Well, right, now,

736
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: the top left doesn't exist as its own particle, right,

737
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: what we have is the top qurk top quark is

738
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,400
Speaker 1: a combination of top left and top right. But a

739
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 1: top quark can spin left, a top quark can be

740
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: left handed. There's a bit of a subtle mathematical distinction

741
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: here between chirality, which is sort of like the nature

742
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 1: of the particle mathematically, is it left handed or right

743
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: handed particle? And holicity, which is actually talking about the

744
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 1: physical spin of the particle or we're talking about here,

745
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: is more like a quantum mechanical label of these things

746
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 1: being left or right handed, and that has to do

747
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: with how the weak force interacts with them. Remember, the

748
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: weak force only interacts with left handed particles and not

749
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 1: right handed particles, and so this is more about that

750
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: quantum mechanical left handedness, not the physical spin of the particle.

751
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then that's one effect that having a

752
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 1: zero Higgs field would have on the universes that I

753
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: guess particles like the electron and the top quark would

754
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: not be flip flopping back and forth. Yeah, exactly, These fermions,

755
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: instead of being combined together into the particles that we know,

756
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: they would be totally separate. We'd have two completely different

757
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: versions of every particle. And that's actually connected to one

758
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,720
Speaker 1: of the other big implications of having the Higgs field,

759
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 1: which is how it connects the electromagnetic force to the

760
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: weak force. Let's get into that effect of having a

761
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: zero Higgs field, but first let's take another quick break.

762
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 1: Right we are imagining a universe today where the Higgs

763
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:08,360
Speaker 1: field is zero, and so we talked about what the

764
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: Higgs field is, kind of why it has a non

765
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:15,720
Speaker 1: zero or what has some energy to it whit can relax,

766
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 1: and kind of what the effect of that is on particles,

767
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: which is to give them the feeling that they have mass.

768
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,320
Speaker 1: And so I guess if you take away the Higgs field,

769
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:30,320
Speaker 1: or at least just make it zero, then particles wouldn't

770
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:32,319
Speaker 1: feel like they have mass. That's what we just talked about,

771
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:34,879
Speaker 1: right that particles wouldn't be flip flopping back and forth,

772
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: and so they would move through the universe like they

773
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: didn't have mass exactly. It would move to the universe

774
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 1: without mass, and they would be split into these left

775
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:46,720
Speaker 1: handed and right handed versions. It would be very different

776
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 1: kind of universe. But it doesn't just affect the matter particles.

777
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: Where we're talking about right now is the fermions, the electrons,

778
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 1: the quarks, all the things that make up matter. It

779
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 1: would also affect the forces that exist in the universe,

780
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: not just the matter. Oh you mean the Higgs field

781
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: also gives mass to forces. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly.

782
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 1: Remember our story. Why we even know the Higgs field

783
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:11,360
Speaker 1: is there is because Peter Higgs saw this connection between

784
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:15,479
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism, which was one force, and the weak force,

785
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: and he realized, oh, these two things actually click together

786
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 1: mathematically into a bigger piece of this sort of universe puzzle.

787
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: Except there was a missing bit there, and that was

788
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. But he recognized that electricity and magnetism

789
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: and the weak force are very very similar. So what

790
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson actually does is it unifies these two things.

791
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:38,720
Speaker 1: It connects electricity and magnetism and the weak forces together

792
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: and makes a new force called electro weak. But when

793
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 1: it does so, it fundamentally changes both of those forces.

794
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: Wait what somehow the Higgs field energy makes it like

795
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: it merges the two forces together, or it just like

796
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 1: kind of provides a connection. So without the Higgs field,

797
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,800
Speaker 1: we would have two different other forces that were separate

798
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: but very similar to each other, and the Higgs field

799
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: changes both of them, and it sort of breaks them

800
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 1: a little bit. So, for example, like there's the electromagnetic force,

801
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: which makes things with electrical charge repel or be attracted

802
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 1: to each other, like electrons repelling each other, or a

803
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: plus in a minus being attracted to each other over

804
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: electric charge. And we also have the weak force, which

805
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 1: is weak, but it also kind of makes things repel

806
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: or attract depending on the weak charge. And so somehow

807
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson modifies both of them. Yes, so what

808
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: we are seeing is the Higgs boson already having done

809
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 1: its modification. Electricity, magnetism and the weak force are after

810
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: the Higgs has already done its work. So if you

811
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: start in the universe without the Higgs field, you have

812
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: two other different forces we call them hypercharge forces and

813
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: isospin forces, and the Higgs field mixes those up and

814
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 1: makes it like a new, weird combination of those things

815
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: into what we today call electricity, magnetism and the weak force.

816
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: So without the Higgs field, so untangle that it's not

817
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:03,839
Speaker 1: like you had the electromagnetic force and the weak force,

818
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: in the Higgs field MUSHes the two. It's like you

819
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: had two other forces and then the Higgs field MUSHes

820
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: them together into something that we still call two things. Yes, exactly,

821
00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: and we still call them two things because it MUSHes

822
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,279
Speaker 1: them together in an unequal way. So it takes the

823
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,520
Speaker 1: particles of these other sort of pure forces, mixes them

824
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: up together to give us the photon the Z in

825
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 1: the two ws. But it's not equal about it. It

826
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: leaves the photon with no mass, but it gives the

827
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: WS and the Z a lot of mass. And so

828
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: it changes electricity and magnetism and the weak force in

829
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:40,280
Speaker 1: very different ways. And that's why the weak force is weak,

830
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 1: because the Higgs field gives so much mass to its

831
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: particles that it makes them very short lived and very ineffective. Now,

832
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: this mushing of forces happens because the Higgs field exists,

833
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:54,280
Speaker 1: or because it has energy. Like if the Higgs field

834
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: still exists but had zero energy, would these forces still

835
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: join up. The forces would not join up, because the

836
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: Higgs fields exists and has energy, and it interacts with

837
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,520
Speaker 1: these particles. Also, it doesn't just interact with fermions. It

838
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:10,160
Speaker 1: also interacts with these sort of pure force particles, and

839
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 1: in doing so it actually gives up some of the

840
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons. The Higgs field actually can oscillate in lots

841
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: of different ways. There are four different Higgs bosons that

842
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: it can make. Three of them get used up in

843
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: order to make the WS and the Z massive. They

844
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: get sort of like eaten by the W and the

845
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: Z as they get made. So then if the Higgs

846
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 1: field has zero energy, which is what we're asking today,

847
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: then what would happen These two forces, or this force

848
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:38,439
Speaker 1: that we call the electricweek would split into these other

849
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: two forces. Yeah, exactly. First of all, there'd be four

850
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons in our universe instead of one, right, and

851
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: electricity magnetism would not be entertangled in the way that

852
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: they are now. So we would not have the photon,

853
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: we would not have the W, we would not have

854
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: the Z. Wait, what do you mean we're gonna have

855
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: the photon? We wouldn't have light without the Higgs boson

856
00:43:57,640 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: or the Higgs field. The electromagnetic field that we of

857
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: today is actually like a distortion of two other fields

858
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 1: mixed together by the Higgs boson. So the photon is

859
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: actually a combination of two other force particles. So without

860
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, you'd have these four particles we call

861
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: them the X and the W, one two three. The

862
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 1: photon is a mixture of the X and the W three.

863
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: So then you would have a universe without light, or

864
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 1: you would have a universe dead with something else that

865
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 1: we would call light. Yeah, we'd have a universe with

866
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: different force particles. None of them would be exactly like

867
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:32,919
Speaker 1: the photon, though they would all be massless. I don't

868
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: know if we'd call one of them light or not,

869
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:36,919
Speaker 1: but it would be a very different universe with very

870
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 1: different forces. Like I wonder if the effect would be

871
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 1: that the electromagnetic force is the same, but the weak

872
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 1: force would be different, you know what I mean? Like

873
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 1: it would be universe that we could compare with ours

874
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, the electromagnetic force is the same.

875
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: There's still something we call the acts like a photon,

876
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: but then everything else is different. There would be a particle,

877
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 1: the X particle, which is similar sort of to the

878
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 1: photon in that it's a single particle that mediates a

879
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: force that would be about as powerful as electricity and magnetism.

880
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: And that X particle, which would mediate the hypercharge force

881
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,759
Speaker 1: in that universe, would also interact with all these particles.

882
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:13,880
Speaker 1: You would be able to interact with all the quarks

883
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: and the leptons and all those kinds of things. So

884
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 1: it'd be sort of similar to the photon. And then

885
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: we'd have these other three particles, the W one, two three,

886
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: from what we call the isospin force. It would be

887
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: sort of similar to the weak interaction, except it would

888
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: be as powerful as electromagnetism because it doesn't have the

889
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson field sort of slowing it down. But it

890
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: would only affect things with the charge for that force, right, Like,

891
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:40,360
Speaker 1: it wouldn't necessarily affect the electrons. It would only affect

892
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,320
Speaker 1: left handed particles, but it would affect the electron. Yeah,

893
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: just the way the weak force, for example, does interact

894
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: with the electron today. Interesting now, and you said there's

895
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,399
Speaker 1: a third effect of having a zero Higgs field too, Yeah,

896
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: that's right. The third effect, which it might be the biggest,

897
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:57,760
Speaker 1: is the one that would blow us all up, the biggest,

898
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: bigger than taking away the mass of the electron and

899
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:06,800
Speaker 1: splitting and totally changing the electromagnetic force and making photons disappear.

900
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is the one would literally blow up

901
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:12,879
Speaker 1: your spot. I mean, it would make all the particles massless, right,

902
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,799
Speaker 1: and so the electron is massless. The quarks are massless,

903
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: and as we talked about earlier, most of the mass

904
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,719
Speaker 1: in the universe doesn't come from the Higgs field, but

905
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: the constructions that you make out of those particles do

906
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: rely in the Higgs field doing its thing. You know,

907
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: for example, you want to build an atom, you need

908
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 1: to do that atom electron that does have mass. If

909
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: you took a hydrogen atom and you suddenly made that

910
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:39,439
Speaker 1: electron massless, what would happen, Well, it would fly off

911
00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: at the speed of light. Right, A proton can't hold

912
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: on to an electron that's moving at the speed of light.

913
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: So the whole construction binding electrons into that proton to

914
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: make an atom rely in the particles having a little

915
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,879
Speaker 1: bit of mass. Without that mass, everything would be totally different. Well,

916
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: it couldn't hold on to the electron where it was,

917
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 1: But I wonder if it could still, you know, trap

918
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: the electron somehow, even if it's moving at this speed

919
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:05,760
Speaker 1: of light, like for example, a black hole can trap

920
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: photons even though they move at the speed of light. Yeah,

921
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: you need a much stronger force to hold onto the

922
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: electron or it would need to orbit like a much

923
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 1: higher distance for example. But the fundament the whole structure

924
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: of the atom would be very very different. Electrons in

925
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: their current orbitals, if you suddenly reduced the Higgs field

926
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: down to zero, they would fly off at the speed

927
00:47:25,160 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: of light. So basically all of our atoms would explode.

928
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: It probably is possible to make new sort of stable

929
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: constructions out of these new particles, but it would be

930
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:37,880
Speaker 1: totally different from what we experienced today. M Yeah, So

931
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: like if you flip the switch to a zero for

932
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, now everything would explode. But if you

933
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,319
Speaker 1: start at the universe with a zero Higgs field, there

934
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: would be maybe a universe with planets and stuff in it.

935
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,560
Speaker 1: It just would look super different than what it does today.

936
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: It would definitely look super different from what it does today,

937
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:56,360
Speaker 1: and it would make all sorts of probably really interesting,

938
00:47:56,520 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 1: complicated emergence structures that are hard for us to predict.

939
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:04,320
Speaker 1: It requires like solving the strong force equations to understand

940
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: how those massless quarks might come together to make stable

941
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 1: particles out of which you could build bigger things. I

942
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:12,719
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. It's very complicated. Like

943
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 1: even today, if you said start from quarks and electrons

944
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:18,920
Speaker 1: and predict chemistry, we don't know how to do that.

945
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: We don't know how to do calculations to predict what

946
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: chemistry would happen, not to mention biology and psychology, and

947
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: so we can't do that for other universes. Also, can

948
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: you predictive food trucks would still be here? I'm just

949
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: saying you said the word inevitable earlier that was really

950
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 1: more hopeful than based on hard calculations. Unfortunately, we cannot

951
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: predict whether food trucks would exist in a universe without

952
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. It's a deep question of philosophy. Well,

953
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: I guess maybe the last question we can ask about

954
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: this strange and weird different universe is what would it

955
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:52,600
Speaker 1: mean for gravity? Like, if the Higgs field would zero,

956
00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: would gravity be different at all? Or could the universe

957
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: still make like black holes and planets using gravity. Yeah,

958
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: it's an important thing to floor because a lot of

959
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: people connect the concept of mass with gravity, right, and

960
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: so they think that the Higgs boson is maybe responsible

961
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 1: for gravity somehow. But remember that the connection between the

962
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: Higgs boson and mass is only for elementary particles. There

963
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 1: are other ways to get mass. That connection is not

964
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 1: really that deep and tight, But gravity is very deeply

965
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: connected to energy and that includes mass. So none of

966
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:25,839
Speaker 1: this would change the role of gravity at all. Right,

967
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,600
Speaker 1: Gravity would still operate. It would still bend space. It

968
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: would still change the path of particles even if they're

969
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 1: all massless and moving at the speed of light. Remember

970
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:37,839
Speaker 1: that gravity can bend space that photons move through, and

971
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:40,399
Speaker 1: so gravity would still exist and you could still get

972
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: black holes on all sorts of other stuff. Gravity would

973
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 1: still tug things together, right, because gravity sort of exists

974
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: almost in a way outside of quantum fields, right, or

975
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: at least the way it's formulated by Einstein. Yeah, general

976
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:55,880
Speaker 1: relativity is not a quantum theory. We don't understand the

977
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: connections between general relativity and quantum theory at all. And

978
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:00,760
Speaker 1: so you're right, if we're changing one of the knobs

979
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:04,280
Speaker 1: of the quantum fields, that doesn't change our understanding of gravity.

980
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: So there would still be energy in the universe even

981
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: if fundamental particles didn't have mass, and so there would

982
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: still be gravitational effects on everything. Would you still have protons? Right?

983
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: Like I wonder, like you know, if the Higgs field

984
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: was zero, quarks would have no mass, would they still

985
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 1: bind together those due to the strong force the strong

986
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: force would still be there. It would still exist. The

987
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: strong force is not affected by the Higgs boson the

988
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 1: way these other forces are, because the gluons are massless

989
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:31,360
Speaker 1: and they don't interact with those Higgs bosons, So you

990
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:33,880
Speaker 1: would still have the strong force. Probably it would be

991
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: able to bind things together into protons or proton like structures,

992
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:40,520
Speaker 1: but they would be different because the quarks now have

993
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: no mass, and so that would definitely change them. They

994
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 1: might be like bigger and fluffier than the protons we

995
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: know today. I wonder if you could even like catch

996
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: quarks to make protons because they're moves ziving around at

997
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: the speed of light. Yeah, it's hard to think about,

998
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,120
Speaker 1: all right, Well, it sounds like the answer to the

999
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: question of whether the universe would be different if the

1000
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:02,759
Speaker 1: Higgs field were row is a big fat yes, a big,

1001
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:06,440
Speaker 1: massive heavy yes. It would make the fundamental particles move

1002
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, which would be totally trippy,

1003
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 1: like the quarts and the electronics you're made out of

1004
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:14,400
Speaker 1: would be zipp around around as fast as light. It

1005
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: would change the forces like we wouldn't have magnets. I

1006
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: guess we wouldn't have electromagnetism the way it is, and

1007
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 1: we'd also have more Higgs bosons. So instead of winning

1008
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: one Nobel Prize, maybe we could win four. Oh yeah,

1009
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: that would reduce a number of murdered physicists in your mystery.

1010
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: Well it would, I guess it would give you like

1011
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,760
Speaker 1: three sequels, and so maybe the body count would be higher.

1012
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 1: Oh man, there's no suspicious death of potentially Nobel Prize

1013
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: winning pusiness. I want that on the record. I know

1014
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds kind of suspicious. In fact, it's

1015
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 1: kind of a funny rule that Nobel put in his

1016
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:55,240
Speaker 1: word right, It's almost like he was asking for it.

1017
00:51:55,239 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: It's almost like he foresaw this true crime podcast. He

1018
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 1: was a visionary. All right, Well, we hope that made

1019
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: you think a little bit about the universe that we

1020
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,640
Speaker 1: do live in, Like how precarious it is. First of upgrade,

1021
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: because we don't know if the Higgs field is going

1022
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:10,760
Speaker 1: to flip to having zero energy. It could happen anytime,

1023
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:14,840
Speaker 1: that's right. Irresponsible particle physicists might trigger the Higgs field

1024
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: to collapse down to its lower vacuum state, changing the

1025
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 1: very nature of the universe, and food trucks yeah, and

1026
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:24,560
Speaker 1: so we live in a precarious universe as the way

1027
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,720
Speaker 1: it is for forces that are way outside of our control.

1028
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:30,279
Speaker 1: So I guess maybe the real lesson here is to

1029
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:32,919
Speaker 1: appreciate the universe that we live in, because it could

1030
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: have been very different and we wouldn't be here. That's right,

1031
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 1: So go out and patronize that food truck. We hope

1032
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:40,839
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.

1033
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

1034
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast

1035
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1036
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 1: or work ever you listen to your favorite shows