In nuclear chemistry elements beyond Plutonium do not occur in nature and are synthesized artificially. Is it a similar case for Higgs boson too?
If so, how does it give mass to particles if it doesn’t exist? Did scientists create Higgs at LHC in 2011 just to make sure our universe exists through some kind of circular causation?
I’m obviously not understanding this properly. Please dispel my misunderstandings with reasonable explanations!
The Higgs boson isn’t an atom like plutonium, it’s “further down”. I think of it in levels:
- atoms, which are made up of
- electrons “orbiting” the nucleus, the nucleus being made up of protons and neutrons. In turn, protons and neutrons are made up of
- quarks
Quarks are a kind of elementary particle called fermions, which are at the same level as bosons (and electrons). Down here it’s all weird and quantum but in an oversimplified nutshell, it’s not so much that they physically exist as that in the maths* we can treat them as existing which makes it easier to think about.
* of the physics models we use
I’m a computer scientist, not a real scientist, so I stand ready to be corrected by those more knowledgable.
edit: @SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world is more knowledgable and helped me fix this up a bit.
Particles are just a way of looking at excited quantum fields. The Higgs field is always everywhere, giving things mass.
Honestly, depending on interpretation of quantum mechanics, you don’t need to acknowledge particles exist at all. It could all be fields becoming ever more entangled and wrinkled.
