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nomadreid
Gold Member
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Recently, in the Scientific American blog
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...with-errors/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20121130
the author criticizes Time Magazine for its science reporting, which of course is nothing new, but one of the criticisms is that Time's author wrote that without Higgs there wouldn't be any mass around (Sentence 1), and the blog counters by pointing out that most mass in the universe is due to the strong force, not Higgs. I am not sure that the blog's counter, although correct, actually destroys Time's contention, in that without Higgs, the elementary particles would not have mass, including the gluons and quarks upon which the strong force acts -- and therefore the question is whether the strong force could act on massless particles. If not, then there would be nothing around (without Higgs) for the strong force to act on, and hence nothing would have mass. (Whereupon Time's contention would be correct, even if it does give the wrong impression.)
I would be happy to be corrected on this; I would not want to be seen as a defender of Time magazine.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...with-errors/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20121130
the author criticizes Time Magazine for its science reporting, which of course is nothing new, but one of the criticisms is that Time's author wrote that without Higgs there wouldn't be any mass around (Sentence 1), and the blog counters by pointing out that most mass in the universe is due to the strong force, not Higgs. I am not sure that the blog's counter, although correct, actually destroys Time's contention, in that without Higgs, the elementary particles would not have mass, including the gluons and quarks upon which the strong force acts -- and therefore the question is whether the strong force could act on massless particles. If not, then there would be nothing around (without Higgs) for the strong force to act on, and hence nothing would have mass. (Whereupon Time's contention would be correct, even if it does give the wrong impression.)
I would be happy to be corrected on this; I would not want to be seen as a defender of Time magazine.