Recent content by Jenk

well I agree, there should be an underlying cause of mass in both situations. But the Higgs field, or something roughly like it, might still exist at an intermediate level - it might be related to the process that gives elementary particles their mass, without being the deepest cause.

I'm really just asking if the Higgs field could be a by-product (related to 2% of mass), rather than a cause of mass. Or does this idea that there a deeper cause, which is behind all mass, require the Higgs field 'n boson not to exist?

thanks... Though it's not necessarily important, the reason I said "...and that's generally a lower energy state than what produces a real particle", is that you said "If the energy in a process is high enough the probability to create a real particle becomes > 0." I'm just trying to get a...

thanks, much appreciated. Johanw's post is very helpful - "If you write down the general solutions these consist of terms that can be interpreted as creation and anihilation operators for (virtual) particles.. So you can either choose to see virtual particles as something real, or as just the...

Let me ask something else - what is the relationship between the particle and the field? I've seen it described sometimes with the Higgs boson as a ripple in the Higgs field, in the same way as a photon is a ripple in the EM field. But Higgs boson is sometimes described as the 'carrier' for...

Thanks Bill, that's helpful. From what you say, it sounds like the boson is an indicator that the field is there, but particles interact with the Higgs field, rather than with the Higgs boson itself. The evidence for the Higgs boson announced today is indirect in several ways, including the...

Could someone answer a question about the Higgs field and mass, someone who know their stuff, maybe a moderator or science adviser? We think of elementary particles as aquiring mass by interacting with the Higgs field, and see this as like moving through treacle, with different particles...

"Take the Milky Way in isolation… if the missing mass implied by the rotation curve was actually HII then we would have already detected that this was the case. You can't surround the galaxy with that much hot gas and not notice it, the enormous bath of H[alpha] emission produced would...

Although I voted for the frontrunner, that GR is wrong, can I point out that the 'backrunner', with only two votes, is a better bet than one might think. It's the idea that GR is right, but DM and/or DE are not real. GR is not a theory of everything, though we want it to be. At present it's...

Sorry if this simple way of putting the answer to spud three's initial problem has been mentioned already. The two parameters that are root 2 apart can be found without any mention of the Earth. Escape velocity at the surface of the moon is root 2 larger than orbital velocity at the surface...

The idea that we can have one established theory contains a hidden assumption. It's the idea that we know enough to do that. A few thousand years ago the Greeks did the same thing - they formed theories far too early, while making the assumption that they were in a position to do so. At that...

When you have an unsolved mystery everyone has the burden of proof. Is anyone really saying that GR does not have to prove DM and DE?

Those points you make are relevant if standard big bang theory applies. But if it doesn't then of course it could all be very different. But there's still the missing mass needed to make galactic dynamics work, and that can be HII without standard BB theory.

HII is invisible and very difficult to detect. It's dark matter, but it doesn't fit with standard big bang theory

I just arrived, hello, voted that GR is wrong, and will be replaced by a new theory sooner or later, without DM and/or DE. I think it'll turn out that DM is real, DE unreal. An interesting question is: if DM was discovered, and it fitted very well with some of our theories but not others...