wolram said:
I have not understood this theory, as i understand energy gravitates, so the
Higgs would convey mass ,and in return the graviton coveys gravity to the
higgs, it would seem to be impossible for either of these to exist separately.
But has energy been shown to gravitate in the lab or other experiment?
If the graviton and the higgs are separate entities not allowing them to
inter act would be interesting.
You are not alone. In the ultimate bootstrap-type process, the Bosons of the Higgs field not only convey mass to every other particle of matter, they also convey mass to themselves. This field is indistinguishable from the vacuum and supposedly is the source of all mass and presumably all inertia. How can the Higgs Bosons convey mass upon themselves, and how can they manage to be massive enough to be undetectable by even the highest-energy collidors? We need to ask this question, and I do not hear it asked often enough.
As for gravitation, isolated massive bodies have no weight. To convey weight to massive bodies, the standard model requires that the gravitons (more theoretical bosons that convey the force of the gravitational field) interact with matter to provide the force that attracts one massive body to another. How does this square with Einstein's model that massive bodies curve space-time and that other massive bodies naturally follow the geodesics intrinsic in this curvature? Not that well, I fear. GR space-time curvature is a nice mathematical model that claims to explain Newtonian gravitation, but it falls apart when we observe galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Also, given the complexities of calculating quantum physics on a dynamical curved reference frame, is it any wonder that reconciling gravitation with quantum physics and the three fundamental forces is tough?
We should expect that like any fields, the Higgs field and the gravitational field can evolve, and can exhibit densification, polarization, etc. These are characteristics of fields. The universe does not exhibit any obvious signs, though, that these two fields have not been perfectly congruent across all visible space and time. This is a compelling (probably strictly rigid) argument that mass, inertia, and gravitation all arise from the interaction of matter with ONE field. In this way, it can be demonstrated that the most logical candidate for the emergence of mass, inertia, and gravitation should be the most elusive and pervasive field in the universe - the field of the quantum vacuum. This is the canvas upon which the universe is displayed, and it is NOT nothingness despite the assumptions of classical physics.
You may wonder why the energy of the vacuum field (theoretically able to explode the universe) and the gravitational equivalence of that energy (theoretically able to crush the universe to a size slightly larger than the size of the Earth) are so precisely balanced. Each of the calculated values of these forces are just about 120 OOM larger than observed. This is a fairly large number (understatement police are torturing my family trying to locate me as I write this!), since the total number of particles in our universe is estimated at ONLY 10
88. What balances these forces? The most obvious answer is that the Fermi exclusion principle prevents the virtual particle pairs of the quantum vacuum from occupying the same quantum states, while the gravitational attraction wants to compact them. This is the only logical means by which these forces can be so exquisitely, dynamically balanced (again, across all visible space and time). In the presence of matter, the virtual particle pairs of the quantum vacuum will be densified and polarized, and in the absence of mass, these virtual pairs will be less polarized, more randomly oriented, and less densified. The implication is that in domains dominated by matter, matter will be more massive, more gravitationally attractive, and have more inertia (resistance to change in direction and speed of motion). The excessive lensing and binding of clusters and the flat rotational curves of spiral galaxies may well be explainable by this relationship.
The Higgs Boson/Graviton dichotomy is untenable unless the fields of these particles are inexplicably, precisely congruent for the entire lifetime and visual extent of the universe. The gravitational equivalence of the "infinite" energy of the vacuum and the "infinite" expansive force of that same vacuum field cannot be so perfectly balanced without a real dynamical interplay between the Fermi exclusion principle and the gravitational attraction everywhere and everytime. The universe could not logically exist otherwise.
I welcome comments. Not personal attacks, or group-think condemnations ("most people wouldn't agree with you") but well-reasoned explanations of how the 120 OOM too large vacuum gravitational equivalence has not yet managed to crush the universe and how the 120 OOM vacuum pressure has not been able to explode it to smithereens. I would also welcome well-reasoned explanations of how two separate fields (the Higgs field and the gravitational field) could have remained so remarkably congruent across all the time and space that we can survey, that the early galaxies and clusters do not seem to behave differently than the galaxies and clusters around us today.
