The Crazy Mass-Giving Mechanism of the Higgs Field Simplified

this video is sponsored by blinkist when you step on a scale and look down at the number that shows up what that number is telling you is how much force the mass of your body exerts on the ground it's simple neonian mechanics Force equals mass time acceleration gravity exerts the acceleration on the mass of your body which creates a force that's your weight so weight is probably easy enough to understand but mass is a little more nebulous if you were floating in space far away from Earth you would essentially have no weight but you would still have the same mass as you did standing on that scale where does the mass of your body come from well the mass comes from all the atoms in your body that individually have a mass where does an atom's mass come from well this is interesting because the mass of atoms at its core is really energy in fact all mass is energy this is exemplified in Einstein's famous mass energy equivalence equation eal mc² mass is interchangeable with energy and the constant c^ squ or speed of light squared is the conversion factor so where is the energy of the atom coming from well 99% of the mass of an atom is contained in the binding energy within the nucleus this energy is a result of one of the four fundamental forces of nature called the strong force which keeps the protons and neutrons glued together in the nucleus of atoms that's where most of your body's so-called Mass resides but it turns out that some of your mass about 1% is contained in the mass of the subatomic particles that make up the atoms these are the electrons that form a cloud around the nucleus as well as the quirks that make up the protons and neutrons so now the question is how did these subatomic particles have an intrinsic Mass if mass is energy then what is the mechanism that confers this energy to these fundamental particles this is where the higs field comes into to the picture this field is everywhere in SpaceTime but most explanations of how this field confers Mass can't avoid getting highly technical talking about symmetry breaking and other Advanced mathematical Concepts in this video I'm going to attempt to explain how the higs field confers maass in an intuitive way so whether you're a math geek or not you will hopefully get a very good intuitive understanding of what's really going on that's coming up right now [Music] I've been wanting to make this video for a while and I think you're going to find it really interesting before we get into it though I want to thank our sponsor blinkist that helped make this video possible this is the one app that saves me more time than any other now as you might suspect I'm a voracious reader blink gives me access to over 5,500 non-fiction books and podcasts that I can read or listen to in only about 15 minutes now it's not a replacement for reading the whole book but it allows me to understand the most important thing things from them for example I just finished listening to a book called The latte factor it's about how making small changes in your life can result in huge outcomes over time like drinking less latte what I learned is how life is really a series of baby steps that may not have an immediate payoff but over time can help you achieve big goals and my goal this year is to improve my mental and physical health blinkist will help me reach that goal and it can do the same for you whatever you want to achieve for yourself is available to you at blink right now Marvin Ash viewers get a whopping 30% off your subscription and you can enjoy two memberships for the price of one in a new feature called blinkist connect this allows you to recommend and share your favorite titles with a friend or loved one your first seven days is absolutely free when you sign up I highly recommend you click the link in the description I think you'll be very impressed now where were we to understand how the higs Field Works we have to first understand what our best theory describing all the matter in the universe the standard model of particle physics is trying to tell us this Theory describes all fundamental particles in the universe as excitations in Quantum Fields so for example an excitation of the electromagnetic field would be a photon an excitation of the electron field is an electron and an excitation of the cork field would be a quk etc these are waves but when they are well localized as in a measurement they appear to us as particles these fields span all of SpaceTime in all directions the the animation you're seeing here is a 2d representation for visualization but the fields would be in three dimensions every type of matter and force particle has its own field so all the fundamental particles of the standard model would be represented by different fields all these fields when they are in their ground state that is their lowest energy State even when no excitations or particles are present always have some vibration due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle particles are constantly being created and annihilated these are virtual particles that exist for such short periods of time that they cannot be measured they borrow energy from the vacuum when they are created and give it right back very quickly when they're annihilated but this flurry of energetic activity for each field collectively adds up to zero net real particles real particles are created only when enough energy is transferred to these fields from some other field to cause an excitation these excitations are the real particles and since these are quantized Fields any excitation occurs only in set quantities so for example an excitation of the electron field would have to occur in integer multiples of 0. 511 Mega electron volts or me which is the mass of one electron so the field can have energy of 1. 022 me which would be the energy of two electrons or any other multiple of 0.

511 but not for example 0. 7 meev which would not be an integer multiple of 0. 511 but the electron only has this intrinsic mass of 0.

511 meev because of its interaction with the higs field without this interaction an electron would be massless it would have energy but only in the form of momentum just like photons this massless electron would be like a Charged Photon and move at the speed of light in fact without the hick field all the other fundamental particles of the standard model would also be massless with the possible exception of neutrinos so the question is how does this Mass come about to answer this we have to understand the concept of vacuum expectation value of the various Fields what does this mean let's imagine for a minute as if there were no higs field if we then took any of the fields and put them inside an empty box like the electron field and if we then weighed that box we would find that box would have no weight in other words the field would have no Mass even though the virtual electrons would be present throughout it similarly all the other fields of the standard model would also have no Mass inside the empty box just Quantum fluctuations but here's the big kicker there's an exception to this rule the higs field it's Unique unique because the higs field in empty space unlike every other field has a net positive Mass its mass is not zero in empty space if we were to weigh the box with the higs field inside it would have a weight the higs field in empty space has a mass this is called the vacuum energy a more technical term for this is the vacuum expectation value V of the Hicks field it is nonzero it is in fact 246 gig electron volts or GV this is just the value that we would expect the Hig field to have when it is in its vacuum state or in its lowest energy State now as I stated earlier Quantum Fields can interact with each other what this basically means is that anything that interacts with the hix field now effectively interacts with this new vacuum expectation value and that interaction means energy and since energy and mass are equivalent the form this interaction energy takes is indistinguishable from the form of energy associated with a rest Mass so when a fundamental particle interacts with the higs field it gains an energy or intrinsic Mass without the higs field for example the electron would be massless like photons and travel at the speed of light however since the electron is coupled to a field with positive value everywhere in the universe individual electrons are constantly interacting with this higs field this constant interaction effectively slows the electron down so if you apply a force to an electron you can imagine a sort of push back from the higs field that causes the electron to resist acceleration this property is what we called inertial Mass the electron's behavior in the vacuum is that of a particle with a well-defined rest mass of 0.