Can the Higgs Field Be Manipulated for Faster-Than-Light Travel?

[BryanF]

Okay so I was on this site 6 years ago as a twelve year-old with a love for physics and I posted some questions on something to do with wormholes and the like. I got promptly chewed out by the pros for posting nonesense based on my past knowledge of physics. I have since wisened up and have made another account. But anyway my question was: if we could somehow disengage the Higgs field for ordinary matter (and be able to "turn it back on" in a sense), would that be a "simple" way to travel at the speed of light?
If this is stupid or unwanted then please don't take offense, I'm still trying to see what questions are OK to ask atm. Shoot any ideas or a thread where I can ask this if this sounds interesting.

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome back to PF!

My suggestion is to instead read more on the science related to the Higgs and ask questions around it rather than jump right in and say if we could just turn it off then what would happen.

We are here to help students with mainstream science and math questions. We don't dwell on speculative science and personal theories.

For example, if you read the book: The Science of Interstellar and had questions relating to statements by the author then you'd get a lot of response,

What have you read about the Higgs and what confuses you about its properties?

 

[jfizzix]

If you could disengage the Higgs field and make all particles (say, in a spaceship) massless, you'd have the unfortunate side effect of every particle that this happened to moving at the speed of light.

This is indeed an unfortunate side effect, as all matter that this happened to would be torn apart (not counting black holes) as through it were made of light instead of matter,

The problem of space travel this way is compounded by the fact that even if all the particles in a transformed spacehip were moving in roughly the same direction (through some unknown procedure), the uncertainty principle would imply a very small likelihood of all the particles in that spaceship being where they need to be (to make up perople and keep them alive and stuff) when the Higgs field is turned back on.

It's an interesting idea, if a bit messy in practice.

 

[BryanF]

This is great, thank you for the feedback guys. I am clearly not a physicist by trade but by hobby I guess. I'll certainly try not to pollute this site with any speculation and focus on applied/tested theories instead.