The Higgs Boson is an Action Not a Material
Last week, I put together some thoughts on the concept of inertia. Go check that out and for now let it suffice to say that my goal was to apprehend the causal mechanism of this everyday phenomenon: What physical actors are involved and how do they interact to produce the obvious resistance to motion we know so well?
Following from revelations by Ernst Mach, many of which guided Einstein to General Relativity, I reasoned that one’s inertia is caused by atoms in the body being pulled on by surrounding atoms.
We are held tight in the focus of a web of tugging atoms. This is fascinating because it implies physical networks of connectivity at play amongst matter.
Even better, this is a connectivity that we can test anytime we change our acceleration. Stoplights will never be the same!
For better or worse, I got some push-back from mathematicians on that article that generally went something like this: “in quantum mechanics inertia is caused by mass, which is an experience/interaction that occurs between the Boson and the Higgs field.” Mass is some sort of quantifiable “fluctuation in the gluonic field.”
Funny thing is that I don’t actually disagree!
I’m only urging awareness that abstract numeric descriptions are not alone sufficient to denote cause.
Why? Because science must explain. And explanations require a lot more of language than quantitative adverbs; that is math like the Gluonic field, alone. In order to understand a physical process, mechanistically, we have to start with the physical actors and visualize them interacting.
Now perhaps you’ve been led to believe that the Higgs and Gluonic fields ARE the physical actors? Certainly, it would make this job of investigating cause so much easier if fields WERE physical materials, but at long last the metaphor has ultimately fallen short. The trouble is, fields, unlike physical materials, don’t actually present surfaces that mitigate effective pressure boundaries. This means fields are abstractions not physical materials. Indeed,
a field is a table of information for a series of locations. And in physics tables can only press upon plates or other tables.
Materials cannot press upon concepts in physics!
“But perhaps the Higgs Boson or the other subatomic particles are the actors?” Unfortunately, again dear reader, however much this would simplify the melee, we can no longer afford that analogy either. See, the Boson is a generic term for another compound set of measurements concerning the pressures that maintain the integrity of the structure of the atom. But it is no physical material. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some examples.
Recall that the Boson of light, called the photon, is also not a physical actor but rather an action or transaction between atoms. You won’t get a pile of photons on the floor when you turn on the lights. And lightbulbs don’t dematerialize when they shine. That’s because Bosons aren’t physical materials! Pressure waves in materials, called phonons, are also a kind of Boson. But when sound travels through a material no material moves through them; the lattice is simply vibrating modally. Because a Boson is an action not an actor.
Abstract mathematical devices like the field and Boson relate processes that happens among, between, or within the physical materials called atoms.
Atomic science isn’t called quantum mechanics for nothing. The ancients as far back as Aristotle and Euclid have long known that all phenomena result of surface to surface interactions: push and pull between existent bodies. Consider then that it is the job of the physicist to apprehend each phenomenon’s mechanism. I’m speaking to the hidden physical inner-workings of light, gravity, magnetism, electricity, atomic decay and all other myriad invisible processes comprising our everyday physical reality. Each deserves a physical mechanism from science.
Please,
understand that mathematics is an immensely powerful tool for cataloguing natural systems and noting relevant quantitative interrelations, but it can only describe, it can never alone explain.
For explanation we’re best served with an expanded palette of grammatical symbols: scientifically defined concepts and detailed visualizations. We must illustrate the physical material actors and show how they interact to cause the observed effect. Detailing an effect quantitatively is but an initial stage. It is then that we must begin to identify potential physical actors and consider how their actions led to the particular effect.
Fields and Bosons are absolutely valuable concepts for describing atomic behavior. But they are not the end of the explanation as many mathematicians would have you believe. Rather, fields and particles are neatly packaged abstractions that contain all kinds of indexed dynamic information pertaining to the measurement of a location at some specific frame in the movie of the apparent phenomenon.
As scientists, we ought to use abstractions like the Higgs field and Boson to guide, not cap, our quest for understanding.
The first step in the scientific method is laying all the evidence out on the table. Math is a great tool for organizing certain pieces of dynamic or otherwise quantitative evidence. When it comes to the atom, the next phase requires identification and conception of the invisible physical actors involved. This is a herculean but exciting task, gifted onward by the mathematicians of the past centuries, for the next generation of atomic scientists. But only should they choose to hear their calling.
