“All matter has mass.”
This is a statement first directed to most of us when we were as young as ten years old, by science teachers in schools. And with this statement in mind, most of us get along with our lives without a second thought to that statement for the evidence that our eyes can see, suggest it to be true. Every human being, every animal, every car you drive, every coffee you drink and every computer which displays this article has a mass associated with them. On top of all that, those which we cannot see such as atoms and subatomic particles, and even anti-matter itself, has mass.
With the foundation of scientific reasoning and research being “questioning why”, it is no large surprise that asking about “why matter has mass”, continues to be done among science enthusiasts. However, due to the trivial nature of the topic, the attribution of mass to matter is often simply accepted as the truth, and not contemplated or investigated on any further. Fascinatingly enough, the few that did, discovered one of the most groundbreaking things in modern particle physics, that has already begun to shape our very fundamental understanding of the universe itself – the Higgs Boson.1
To understand what the Higgs Boson is, it is essential to conceptualize the universe not as we do already, but as a collection of overlapping fields – a field being anything that can be quantified across each point in space and time. For example, a temperature field gives information about the temperature at every point in a given space, at any given time. Similarly, the universe is composed of several fields that define the physical properties of everything in it. However, sometimes, we observe excitations – disturbances, like ripples in a pond – in these fields. Such excitations are what are known as particles, essentially meaning that all particles and hence all matter, is none other than excitations in fields. This, albeit simplified here, is the fundamental principle of Quantum Field Theory2, which has come to define the nature of the universe in cutting-edge science.
Through the Quantum Field Theory, the idea of a “Higgs Field” was first proposed by the team of scientists spearheaded by Peter Higgs in 1964, to Physical Review Letters (PRL), with three scientific papers detailing the mechanism of the Higgs Field’s function.
The Higgs Field is one that all fundamental particles interact with as they exist in the universe. The nature and intensity of this interaction gives the fundamental particles their property of mass. Since fundamental particles build up all matter, it was proposed that mass is “given” to matter through the Higgs Mechanism and the interaction of matter with the Higgs Field. This groundbreaking theory was rejected immediately by PRL multiple times due to its absurdity and “lack of any viable connection to physics.” However, nearly half a century later in 2012, the scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), discovered the excitations of the Higgs Field, and as all excitations of quantum fields are particles, the excitations of the Higgs Field too manifested as a particle. This particle was the Higgs Boson. The discovery of the Higgs Boson fundamentally changed science itself, and proved through its existence that mass is given to all particles through their interactions with the Higgs Field.3
Today, the Higgs Mechanism is a widely accepted theory in particle physics, and the discovery of the Higgs Boson is even taught about at schools. The vitality of the Higgs Field lies in the fact that no atoms, no chemistry, no life, and no matter would exist in the universe if it did not exist, for it is the mass, that fundamentally causes the interactions and behavior of all matter. This is why the Higgs Boson is deservedly dubbed “The God Particle”, for its role in the field’s proof of existence.4
Studies on the Higgs Field are far more advanced today, and scientists have a vastly improved understanding of the Higgs Mechanism due to rigorous research and its applications. Today, we try and use the Higgs Mechanism and the Higgs Field Theory for several studies and further groundbreaking discoveries. Research is being done to understand the origins of the universe, its potential end, and its connection to the Higgs Field in general cosmology. Additional studies on precise measurements of the fundamental particles are being carried out, alongside constant proposals on the interaction of dark-matter with the Higgs Field.5
With the work that is already being done, and the many potential discoveries yet to be made through it, it is evident that the theory proposed by Peter Higgs in 1964 allowed for a significantly more complicated, yet a more complete understanding of the universe as a whole, and while it is intuitive that all matter indeed has mass, the origin of the property of mass in the Higgs Field is what made the universe possible in the first place.
References
- Ellis, J., Gaillard, M. K., & Nanopoulos, D. V. (2016). A historical profile of the Higgs boson. The standard theory of particle physics, 255-274.
- Roman, S. (2005). Field theory (Vol. 158). Springer Science & Business Media.
- Lyre, H. (2008). Does the Higgs mechanism exist? International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 22(2), 119-133.
- Gianotti, F., & Virdee, T. S. (2015). The discovery and measurements of a Higgs boson. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 373(2032), 20140384.
- Bertolami, O., Cosme, C., & Rosa, J. G. (2016). Scalar field dark matter and the Higgs field. Physics Letters B, 759, 1-8.