The Higgs particle itself has mass and recently it is theorized to be around 96-117 GeV while prior to that it was thought to be much higher. The current particle colliders are not able to reach this limit but it is expected that the Large Hadron Collider (a proton-proton collider) under construction at CERN will be able to reach these energies and potentially discover such a particle.

Matter is made of atoms, which are made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Each proton or neutron has about 2000 times the mass of an electron. The important questions are not only why they have mass but why the masses are what they are.

Physicists have observed 16 particles that make up all matter under the Standard Model, but if only those 16 exsisted according to calculations none would have mass. A 17'th particle, the Higgs, is needed to give them all mass.

All the known forces in the universe are the result of four fundemental forces, the strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational forces. Progress in a quest to unify these processes was acheived by the discovery of the W and Z intermediate vector bosons in 1983 and the combining of the weak and electromagnetic force into a unified electroweak force. While that was successful there was a major conceptual promblem that being if they were both a part of the same electroweak force, why is it that the exchange particles, or mediator particles, are of different masses? The photon carrier of the EM force is massless, while the W and Z bosons have masses more than 80 times that of a proton.

- The Standard Model

Something I have not discussed previously and maybe now is a good time to explain what exactly it entails.

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory which describes the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces, as well as the fundamental particles that make up all matter. It is a quantum field theory, and consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity. To date, almost all experimental tests of the three forces described by the Standard Model have agreed with its predictions.

The Standard Model contains both Fermions and Bosons. Ferions possess half-integer spin and will obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no fermions can share the same quantum state. Bosons have spin of either 0, 1 or 2 and do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Typically you can say that fermions are particles of matter and bosons are particles that transmit forces.

The model is a combination of electroweak interaction theory and quantum chromodynamics theory or QCD. Both of these theories are gauge field theories, meaning that they model the forces between fermions by coupling them to bosons.

The bosons in the Standard Model are :

.Photons, which mediate EMR
.W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak nuclear force
.Eight types of gluons, which mediate the strong nuclear force. Also in relation to "colors".
.Higgs bosons, which induce spontaneous symmetry breaking of the gauge groups and are responsible for mass

Interestingly enough, the Gravitron, the bosons believed to be the carrier of the gravity force is Not included or discussed in the Standard Model leaving it incomplete. In addition, this absense of gravity provides no mechanism to generate the cosmic inflation that is believed to have occurred at the begining of the universe. The reason it is absent is because these effects are tiny under high-energy physics situations and can be neglected in describing the experiments. Eventually they will try and incorporate it.

There are 12 types or flavors of fermions presented as either left or right handed(symmetry). Those including the proton, neutron, and eletron. The electron being the only fundemental of those while the other are made up of smaller quarks held together by the strong interaction. In short the model describes mass as a coupling between a left handed fermion and a right handed fermion. Example, the mass of an electron is a coupling between a left handed electron and a right handed electron which is the antiparticle of a left handed positron.

The fermions can be arranged in three "generations", the first one consisting of the electron, the up and down quarks, and the electron neutrino. All ordinary matter is made from first generation particles; the higher generation particles decay quickly into the first generation ones and can only be generated for a short time in high-energy experiments. The reason for arranging them in generations is that the four fermions in each generation behave almost exactly like their counterparts in the other generations; the only difference is in their masses. For example, the electron and the muon both have half-integer spin and unit electric charge, but the muon is about 200 times more massive.

The electron and the electron-neutrino, and their counterparts in the other generations, are called "leptons". Unlike the other fermions, they do not possess a quality called "color", and therefore their interactions (weak and electromagnetic) fall off rapidly with distance. On the other hand, the strong force between quarks gets stronger with distance, so that quarks are always found in colorless combinations called hadrons. These are either fermionic baryons composed of three quarks (the proton and neutron being the most familiar example) or bosonic mesons composed of a quark-antiquark pair (such as pions). The mass of such aggregates exceeds that of the components due to their binding energy.

The commonly named fermions and experimentally verified masses are :

Electron, .0005 GeV
Muon .10 GeV
Tau 1.8 GeV

Electron neutrino ?
Muon neutrino <.00017 GeV
Tau neutrino <.017 GeV

Up quark .005 GeV
Charm quark 1.4 GeV
Top quark 174 GeV

Down quark .009 GeV
Strange quark .17 GeV
Bottom quark 4.4 GeV

Notice the extreme mass of the top quark which consequently has a scaling relation to the mass of the Higgs if ever detected.

An extention of the model is that of suppersymmetry, which proposes a massive supersymmetric partner for every particle.

Alright if none of that makes any sense, it's ok. What is important is that the question of what gives mass to particles is in your mind. It is something one never questions, particles have mass because "they just do" and that was all there was to it. From here we can ask all sorts of interesting questions like, why do we have to say the photon has no mass, what principle or mathmatical reasoning is behind this? Is mass a numerical application of a given quanta? Can't weight and mass be explained by the number of Xmass quanta within a particle? - In other words, why can't one fundemental particle and one only have mass, and the amount that particle within other particles is why those particles masses are what they are? How exactly does mass relate to energy and what is E=MC2 really all about?

These are not easy questions to answer. I will spend a great deal of time questioning the apparent masslessness of the photon because I find it to be one of the most peculiar properties of any particle in nature. And as always I will question if that is indeed the truth or if there is something else. I read often a statement regarding the mass of the W and Z particles which carry the electroweak forces are about a hundred times the mass of a photon. That clearly does not make sense if the photon has no mass.

July 22 2004

Off topic to the above, I would like to state my thoughts on a recent news item. Hawkings announced he has solved the 'information lost paradox' that you may be familiar with or not. The question was asked, does information that falls into a blackhole remain or is it lost forever? Basically he argued that information is lost forver and possibly is leaked out into a 'baby universe' Right.., anyway. But he made a bet with others whom disagreed with that idea and it turns out now he says he was wrong, information is preserved and dismisses the idea that it leaks into another universe. Alright, here is the story

http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/blackhole_bet.html

//An excerpt

"The equations of general relativity lead to the inescapable conclusion that collapsing stars, if massive enough, will keep right on collapsing, until they tear a hole in the fabric of space-time. At such a location, called a singularity, gravity is so intense that the familiar laws of physics break down. Surrounding the singularity is a region of no return, called the horizon.

Together a singularity and its horizon form a black hole. Anything that slips past the boundary, including information, can never escape the irresistible pull. Doing so would require fleeing at a speed faster than light. And Einstein's other great theory, special relativity, holds that to be impossible. Throw in an encyclopedia, or the whole Library of Congress, and the data seem to be gone forever.

And that's where the paradox arises. One basic idea of quantum mechanics is what might be called the Law of Conservation of Information. Bits of data must never disappear. Otherwise, an important notion called "micro-reversibility" would be violated:

Whenever two particles collide and splinter into shards, and those shards into other shards, it is supposed to be possible to reverse the process. Presented with the progeny of this cascading process, one should be able to "run the film" backward and identify the parents and grandparents. If information can just leave the universe, then physical processes would not be perfectly predictable.

Even worse, it is widely believed that if information is not conserved, then neither is energy. Information, after all, is physical, not ethereal. "To transmit a given amount of information in a given amount of time requires a minimum amount of energy," Giddings explained. "To lose a given amount of information in a given amount of time requires a violation of energy conservation."

and the recent news

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2941288

"In the mid-1970s, Dr Hawking said information swallowed by a black hole could never be retrieved. A black hole is formed when a star collapses, and produces such a strong gravitational field that matter or light are sucked in—and appear never to escape. But this contradicts the so-called reversibility requirement of quantum theory: that the end of any process must be traceable back to the conditions that created it. In other words, what goes in must eventually come out in some form.

However, some scientists, including John Preskill of the California Institute of Technology were convinced that Dr Hawking was wrong. Dr Preskill made a bet that, some day, a mechanism would be found that would allow this missing information to be released by a black hole as it evaporated. And this is exactly what Dr Hawking has now done.

He presented his ideas to physicists attending a conference on general relativity and gravitation in Dublin on July 21st. Using high-level mathematics, the language of theoretical physics, he revealed findings that contradict his earlier work. He says black holes never form an absolute event horizon—ie, a boundary from which nothing can escape. Rather, they form an apparent horizon.

Blurring this boundary means that information can eventually get back into our universe. So, when the black hole dies, it opens up its secrets not to a parallel universe but to our own. As the information returns, albeit in a mangled form, this reconciles the information paradox.

Black-hole physics has provided fodder for science-fiction stories for years. When announcing his findings, Dr Hawking was apologetic about his news, “I'm sorry to disappoint science-fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.”

Physicists have been trying to chisel away at the paradox for many years with little success. It is Dr Hawking's remoulding of his own work that has been responsible for resolving the wager made in 1997. Dr Preskill has now won, as Dr Hawking said the information paradox would hold. The published terms of the bet were that the loser would award the winner with a set of encyclopedias from which “information can be recovered at will”. Dr Preskill is the proud new owner of an encyclopedia of baseball."

Alright so what would I have to say about all this? This. The whole concept is based on ... General Relativity. Mathmatically it's genius, but thats where it ends. A blackhole is Not a 'tear' in the 'fabric' of space. Just rediculous. What is a blackhole? It is a super compacted geometrical/spherical mass, but unlike a star that it once was, does not emit light. Everything that made up that star, it's total mass and energy, is present and accounted for in what is now known as a blackhole. You can only compact something so tight together, what that limit is it's hard to say but I'm guessing it's only limited by the physical geometry of what comprises an atom. In other words, to imagine it, take a handfull golf balls and imagine those are quantum particles, make a rule that states they cannot be fudementally broken down or geometrically altered eg. squished then you get the idea. Since their geometry is 'fixed'
and you can only have so much 'air' inbetween them, in other words, when you super compact mass what you are doing is bringing those quantum particles closer together and at the same time removing the amount of space or air between them. Right so, isn't it the organization of particles that defines the macro molecules and elements and so forth? Yes of course, so what happens when you alter the organization, say by compacting them? You create a heavier, denser element. So what is the limit of compactification? Exactly what I described above.

It's a question of how tight can you squeeze something. It does not however suggest that information is lost. Information is altered yes, but the fact of the matter is, what goes into a blackhole, becomes a part of the blackhole. An meterorite crashes into a planet, is information about that meterorite lost?, no. But how do I know a blackhole is really a geometrical physical object? Call it a hunch. It should be glaringly obvious that the size of a blackhole is related to the amount of matter that went into it, not the size of the 'tear' as I assume they would have you believe. And even so there is the question of if that is what they think, how in the heck is a 'singularity' suspended above this tear in space? I mean it's just dumb!

How is a blackhole formed? Of course it is formed when a star at the end of it's life has expended all it's energy, it ceases nuclear fusion. A super massive star has the same amount of gravitational potential as the blackhole it will eventually become. How so? During a stars lifetime active nuclear fusion pushes everything apart while at the same time gravity is pulling everything back in so that an equalibrium of forces is acheived; and when fusion stops, gravity takes over. Very simple concept. Now the physical geometry or size of the sun is related to the amount of mass present, which goes to say the amount of gravitational pull present and also the amount of nuclear fusion present, so the 2 forces work against each other until an equilibrium is acheieved that is known as the size of the sun. Again, when fusion ceases, gravity takes over and now the size of the sun is only dependent on the amount of gravitational pull. Some would have you believe it shrinks all the way down into an almost infinate point known as a singularity, I will not. Instead, I would have you believe it compacts on itself down to the limits of atomic physical geometry. That is to say, you cannot compact a basketfull of golfballs together more than they already are. However you can compact a handfull of balloons and squeeze the air out in between them. I would further go to say that the process of compatification leads to the suspension of electron-photon exchange, hence the reason it is a blackbody.

On the question of thermal radiation or blackbody radiation or will a blackhole eventually evaporate; ya maybe, Slowly.. over billions of years, but you know what? who cares.

Aug 18 2004

Why gravity is not air pressure.

At sealevel there is an air pressure force on you equal to about the weight of a small car. Imagining this you might wonder if air pressure is related or in fact what gravity is. If they are related you might wonder which is the battery and which is the flashlight.

First of all, let's understand why this air pressure exsists. Air pressure exsists because gravity is pulling down on air molecules which in turn push down on you. While this force could imaginatively hold you to the surface of the Earth this is still not what gravity is.

Air pressure acts on the surface of an object while gravity acts directly on the mass of an object. Take a beach ball and a bowling ball for example. Which force is associated with the weight of each object? Gravity. Weight is how we measure the force of gravity. If you were to try and reason that air pressure could be related to weight and hence force of gravity you would find it impossible.

So we can safely say that air pressure is not gravity, air, is rather an object that is being affected by gravity. Air pressure does not exsist without gravity. Just as weight is an effect of gravity, air pressure is an effect of gravity.

Both gravity and air pressure are the greatest at the surface of the Earth and thier values obey an inverse square law when you begin to move away from the surface towards outter space, however when you go below sea level gravity gets weaker but air pressure increases. This might sound incorrect but it happens to be true. The farther below the surface, the more air molecules that are on top of you hence more air pressure, yet you might assume since gravity gets weaker also air pressure should not increase but stay rather constant despite the fact that more air is present. *Shrugs*

Underwater is a completely different story with regards to pressure. Now not only are you considering the amount of air molecules above you, you bring water molecules into the equation which happen to be much heavier. Simply stated, pressure is known by the amount of mass above you acting on the surface of a body.