Would the Universe be different with a zero Higgs field?

Daniel and Jorge explore how the Higgs field shapes our Universe and what it would be like to live without it.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, I'll see Daniel and Jorge food truck going,
and we expect to see it on a street corner
anytime soon. Not yet. We still need a few things.
We're missing a menu and a chef. Oh, and a vehicle.
I mean our food truck is just missing the food
and the truck. Yeah, that's right, because I've been working

(00:29):
on the special particle physics twist that we're going to
be offering. Ooh, sounds tantalizing. Is it like some kind
of interesting flavor fusion or some weird quirky flavors. It's
a special device to suck out all of the Higgs
bosons from your food so you can eat it without

(00:49):
gaining any mass. WHOA, that would be massive. It's not
something we take lightly. You should give that some heavy
thinking first. Hi am Orhammer, cartoonists and the creator of

(01:14):
PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and
a professor at UC Irvine, and I wonder what a
bowl of Higgs bosons would taste like. What don't we
eat a bowl of Higgs bosons anytime we eat a
bowl of anything? Yeah, there are Higgs bosons in everything
we eat. But I want a pure dose of higgss,
you know what is their inherent flavor. Wouldn't be kind

(01:35):
of a heavy meal, though, it would probably make me heavier,
that's for sure. Why Ye. Usually eating a bowl of
anything will give you a lot of calories, unless it's
a bowl of anti matter that'll make you literally lighter. Oh,
it would make explode, wouldn't it. A teaspoon of anti
matter we make your whole town explode? Yeah, and it
would annihilate your appetite. Well, I'm anti exploding your town,

(01:55):
so you might want to think about other ways to
And I laid your appetite. Is that only because we
live in basically the same town exactly? But anyways, Welcome
to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of iHeartRadio in which we enjoy the flavor of
the universe, both the main course of everything that science
has unraveled about the way the universe works and our

(02:18):
mysterious cosmos operates, as well as the spicy side dish
of confusion of everything that we don't yet understand about
the universe. It's a delicious place to live and to
be curious and just to wonder. About how everything works.
It's right. We serve up bowls folds of amazing signs
here talking about the universe and the cosmos and everything,

(02:38):
and it ready for you to scoop up and feed
your mind and your soul with amazing knowledge about everything
that is. And as we chew on that everything we
understand and don't about the universe, you might wonder, why
does the universe taste this way and not some other way.
Is it possible for the universe to have been different
if we ran the whole experiment again from the Big Bang,

(03:00):
would we end up with basically the same thing, or
where there's some random twists and turns that determined the
fate of our universe? And might have said it on
another course, Yeah, it is a very peculiar universe, pretty interesting,
and especially because of the fact that we're in it,
we had a lot of spice to the universe, I think,
and so you got to wonder if the universe was

(03:21):
any different, would we still be here. It's a deep
question of philosophy and one that's inspired by specific discoveries
we've made about particle physics. As we look out at
the universe and pull it apart and try to understand
what it's little bits are and how they work. We
notice a lot of sort of specific details about how
things work. Particles have these specific masses, They follow all

(03:42):
these very specific rules, and we don't always understand why
they follow those rules or have those particular values or interactions,
and whether those things are arbitrary or if they have
to be that way. Yeah, if it seems like the
universe is the way it is because of some random reason,
I guess you got to wonder, like, what if it
was different? What if the universe looked and felt and

(04:05):
worked in a slightly different way? Would there still be
food trucks? There will always be food trucks. I think
their inevitability of evolution, well, they only became hipp and
popular maybe like ten years ago. I don't know. I
don't go out often enough to know what's hip and
popular on the streets. But I think it's an extension
of a question everybody asks themselves. I mean, we know
that the probability of you in particular being here is tiny,

(04:29):
just for like the chances of your parents having met
and coming together at just the moment for you to
be born is astronomical. On top of that the probability
for humans to have evolved and for Earth to have formed,
and for our galaxy to be right here. On top
of all of that stuff is an even deeper layer
of questioning about reality, about whether the very rules of

(04:52):
the universe have to be this way and whether they
could be another way. Add that to the probabilities for
you to exist, and the whole thing its dwarfs you.
It makes you feel like you are so unlikely. It's
amazing that you're here. It is amazing that we're here.
Although I do try to think about the moment of
my conception the least amount possible. That's something I'd like

(05:12):
to put a lot of thought in. But it is
interesting to think about the conception of the universe and
how it came to be and what made it the
way it is right now. Yeah, and something we know
very little about. We've discovered all these rules that particles follow,
but we don't know if those values are set randomly,
as you suggested, or if there's some deeper set of
rules that requires them to have these values. It's just

(05:33):
the only universe we've ever studied, and so we don't
have other examples to inform us and so to the
on the podcast, we'll be asking the question would the
universe be different with a zero Higgs feel I would
certainly be involved in fewer Nobel Prize winning discoveries. Wait

(05:54):
what do you mean, Well, just in the sense that
I wouldn't be here if the Higgs field was zero.
I see, that's right. Yeah, the discovery of the or
I guess, the confirmation of the Higgs field, and the
discovery the Higgs boson that won a Nobel Prize, and
you were sort of involved in that project, right, I
was involved in the project from the experimental side, like
we demonstrated the Higgs field is there, and we produced

(06:17):
the Higgs boson and saw it and studied it. We
of course didn't win the Nobel Prize for that. Our
discovery confirmed the theoretical ideas, and those theorists all won
the Nobel Prize for it. Though there was a lot
of really interesting sort of political jockeying for the Nobel Prize.
I'm not sure if everybody out there appreciates sort of
like how personal and political the process of choosing people

(06:38):
for the Nobel Prize is. There's some really interesting stories there.
I think we all appreciate some gossip bill the beans
who backstaff who with the Nobel Prize in the living room. Well,
the issue is that they can give the Nobel Prize
to up to three people. That's of course the rule
from Nobel's will, and so everybody knew Higgs was going
to be on the list, but the question was who

(07:00):
else got a share of the Nobel Prize? And there
were two other folks that were sort of high in
the running, but then one of them passed away before
we actually discovered the Higgs field suspiciously that it so
sucks this is not a true crime podcast. Or maybe
it could be. What were the circumstances of this person's

(07:20):
to mice. We're not going to dig into that, but
it did leave an opening because you cannot win the
Nobel Prize posthumously. If you pass away, you can't win it.
So there was a third slot there, and it wasn't
clear who should get that third slot. So all of
a sudden, all the theorists who had been involved in
the Higgs Boson theoretical frameworks started giving a bunch of

(07:41):
seminars about their role in these pivotal developments, essentially campaigning
for that third spot. Oh, I thought you were going
to say that all the scientists involved in the Higgs
discovery suddenly started to mysteriously disappear and pass away. No,
this is not a true crime podcast. It's also not
a paranormal activities podcas cast. They didn't all like disappear

(08:01):
into ghosts or anything like that. But you know, when
everybody realized, oh, this sort of a third slot available
for who's going to share the Nobel Prize for the
Higgs boson, a lot of people started to publicly make
the case that they should get that third share. Wow,
Like like they put out ad saying, like, for your
consideration for best supporting scientists in a Higgs field discovery.

(08:23):
It's exactly the particle physics version of that. People started
putting paper ons in the archive, you know, a historical
retrospective on the discovery of the Higgs boson, highlighting their
role in it, for example, giving a lot of public
talks about this kind of stuff, you know, sort of
wink wink, not not remember I'm very important because in
the end, the Nobel Prize is decided by people, for
people about people. It's political like everything else. Yeah, but

(08:46):
I bet if the scientists suddenly started disappearing or dying
under mysterious syncretest and fewer people would put their names
out there. I don't know, maybe it would make it
even more mysterious and attractive to people. Well, there's not
a true crime podcast, is a true science podcast. But
it is kind of interesting to think about the Higgs

(09:07):
Boson discovery and how significant it was. Right because discovering
the Higgs field sort of confirm the last bit of
the standard model, which is the part that gives things mass.
It's really an incredible punctuation mark on a centuries long story.
You know, when Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism, it was
an incredible moment in theoretical physics because it took two

(09:27):
pieces of mathematics and recognized it like both of them
were incomplete, but in complementary ways. It's like he saw
two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and realized that one's
fit perfectly inside the other. That was beautiful. But then
Higgs a hundred years later realized that this new joint
piece electricity magnetism fit perfectly with the weak force in

(09:48):
exactly the same way, except there was one piece missing,
so he was able to join these things together and
recognize like the outline of a new missing piece, which
of course is the Higgs field, which we then discovered.
So it's a really an incredible story of how like
mathematics has shown us the path to insight into the
very nature of the universe. Yeah, no, for sure. I

(10:08):
mean where would physics be without mass? I mean you
kind of owe everything to that, right, and also engineers
to make your experiments. Yeah, and cooks and plumbers and
everything else, and food trucks. We stand on the shoulders
of basically everybody. Yeah, it is an amazing discovery and
the end of a long road of exploring what the
universe is made out of. But like you said, it's
so significant this Higgs field because it sort of gives

(10:31):
things mass, or at least that's the common perception of it.
That it kind of makes you wonder, like what would
happen if there was no Higgs field, or the Higgs
field was zero. Yeah, because the Higgs field is different
from every other field we have found. You, the electron field,
the photon field, the cork fields, all these are fields
that fill space. They can like wiggle in ways that

(10:51):
we see as particles. But the Higgs field is different
from all of those fields because it has so much
more energy, sort of like stuck inside of it instead
of relaxing down zero like everything else did when the
universe cooled. It's sort of like got stuck on a shelf,
and that really changes the very nature of our universe.
M Yeah, Well, in this podcast, we'd like to ask
a lot of what if questions, right, Daniel, I think

(11:13):
we've had episodes about like what if the Earth's gravity
suddenly turned off? Or what if we didn't have electrons? Right?
Big questions about how the universe might or could be different. Yeah,
These are fundamental games, not only because it lets us
think about other universes and what they might be like,
but because it helps us understand the role of everything,

(11:33):
how they all come together to make the symphony of
our reality. Yeah. I mean, I guess you can ask, like,
what would life be like without food trucks? And that
kind of tells you a little bit more about how
significant Yeah, if you can even call that living? What's
life without tacos? That say? Yet? Right? Probably healthier actually
longer and healthier? Well do they were asking the question
of whether the universe would be different and how it

(11:56):
would it be different if the Higgs field were zero,
if that big discovery had never occurred, or even go
back to the beginning of the universe, what if the
universe started without a Higgs field? And so, as usual,
we were wondering how many people out there had thought
about this question and wonder what Higgs list life would
be like. So thanks very much to everybody who volunteered
for this segment of the podcast. We really enjoy hearing

(12:19):
your thoughts, and we'd like to hear your thoughts. In particular,
we're talking to you, a listener who has never volunteered.
Please don't be shy right to us two questions at
Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it for
a second. What do you think would happen if the
universe's Higgs field was zero? It's what people had to say.
So I only know about the Higgs field through your show,

(12:41):
and I only think I heard it once or twice,
so I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing it's some
kind of energy, and if it was zero, I'm guessing
the universe would be nothing. If the Higgs field was zero,
then I guess we will be all as soup of energy. Well,
I do know that the Higgs field is responsible for

(13:01):
giving particles mass, and without it, then particles in the
universe would not feel the effects of gravity if they
didn't have mass, and without the effects of gravity, things
wouldn't clump together. So you know, we wouldn't have stars,
we wouldn't have galaxies. I guess after the Big Bang

(13:22):
it would be just the soup. I think this has
something to do with false vacuum and the destruction of
the universe. Given that the Higgs boson is responsible for
giving particles mass, my assumption is that if the Higgs
field was zero, then it would be not possible for
particles to have mass, and therefore gravitational effects would not

(13:42):
work in a universe where Higgs field is zero. Well,
if I understand it right, the Higgs field transfers mass
to particles, So if it didn't do that, the particles
would have no mass, which means they wouldn't attract each
other and it would just be fly around the speed
of light. So I guess the universe would just be

(14:03):
like a big mist. I mean, there would be no clumping,
there would be no aggregation. Everything would just be like
flying around and would just be like a big fog,
or even not just nothing because there's no mass, there's
no attraction. So I think if the Higgs field were zero,

(14:25):
the universe would either look incredibly boring and nothing could
or would happen, or the opposite, that the universe would
become incredibly chaotic and out of control very quickly, rather
like a maths class on these substitute maths teachers first day.
I guess the Higgs field is that thing that gives

(14:48):
stuff mass, So if there is no way to have mass,
there would be essentially no gravity. I guess things would
probably be very smooth then, not clumped together as much.
All right, not a lot of happy answers here. Nobody
wants to live in that universe. It sounds like I'm
just disappointed. Nobody said that without the Higgs field you

(15:09):
couldn't get Higgie with it. Would we even have will
Smith without the Higgs field? Right, that's the big question.
It'd be like a slap in the face to the
universe too soon. All right, he's the fresh prince of
particle physics after all. Well, this is an interesting question.
What would the universe be like or would the universe

(15:30):
be different if the Higgs field were zero. So let's
dig into this question, Daniel. We talked a little bit
about the Higgs boson and the discovery, but how do
physicists define the Higgs field? How can we understand what
it is? Our modern concept of like what space is
from a quantum mechanical perspective, involves basically a bunch of
quantum fields. So imagine empty space out there. It's never

(15:52):
really empty when a particle moves through that space. It's
really just like a ripple in some quantum field. And
these quantum fields fill the whole universe. There's one for
every kind of particle that's out there. The deepest question
is like why do we have these fields? Why do
they exist? How many different kind of fields are there?
And the answer is we just don't know. We've observed
these fields, we've found them. We've been able to describe

(16:14):
them mathematically using wave equations, so we think they wiggle
the same way that like water in your bathtub wiggles,
or in a similar way at least, And so the
name of the game is like hunting out these fields.
How many fields are there? And the Higgs field is
just one of those fields. That's out there, but it's
also quite different from the other fields. You know, particles
which are excitations of the Higgs field don't have any spin,

(16:37):
which makes them very different from every other kind of
particle we have seen. Electrons and photons, they all have
some kind of spin. Higgs bosons don't have any spin.
But just to maybe clarify for people, you say, there
are other fields, and basically, like we're wiggles and fields, right, Like,
every particle out there, including the ones that we're made
out of, are there because there are fields for it, right, Like,

(16:59):
there's an electric field that perme it's the entire universe,
and that's where electrons come from. But it's also the
same for like quarks, right quarks with makeup protons and neutrinos.
Everything has a field. Basically, that's right, Exactly, every particle
is just a ripple in this field, and that sort
of like unifies all the particles. Like you might think
about one electron and another electron that's totally separate particles,

(17:20):
you can also think of them as two different ripples
in the same field. There's one electron field that fills
the whole universe and the whole concept of a field
might sound sort of weird and abstract and hard to
get your head around, but it's really just like a
number for every point in space. Everywhere in space you
can have a number, and maybe that number is zero
or maybe that number is ten. Right in this case,

(17:42):
it's like the value of the field, and as you
put energy into that field, it can oscillate and wiggle
in a way that looks like a particle. Also, all
of space is like embedded with all of these quantum fields. Again,
we don't know why. This is just our description of
the universe we have observed, and the Higgs field is
different from all of those fields because it interacts with
those fields in a special way. It connects with them

(18:03):
and changes how particles move through the other fields in
just the way so as to make those fields look
like they have mass. So the electron flies through the universe,
but it also interacts with the Higgs field, and that
changes how the electron particle moves through its field in
just the same way as if the electron itself had mass.
So the Higgs field sort of changes what we think

(18:25):
mass is instead of like the amount of stuff and
a little particle that we think of. It it's like
how strongly the Higgs field changes how those ripples move
through other fields. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think. Sometimes
I sit down and I, you know, can imagine my
body and all the atoms that my hands and my
arms and my legs are made out of. Pretty amazing
to imagine each one of those atoms as being, you know,

(18:47):
a collection of electrons. Each of those electrons it's just
being like little ripples, like little wiggles in some sort
of universe field. It's pretty tribute to think about. Yeah,
and it connects you with all the other electrons in
the universe, right, you know, like why are all electrons
the same really? Because they're all just ripples in the
same field. It's like we're all sharing one huge blanket,

(19:08):
you know, instead of having our own little blankets. Yeah,
we're all connected, man. But then you're saying, the Higgs
field is another field that is all around this, but
it doesn't make up matter, does it, Like it Like,
there's no stuff mean out of Higgs bosons. So a
lot of the fields create particles that are stable, like
the electron field. You can have stuff that just sits there,
and the electron can sit there for an infinite amount

(19:29):
of time and just exist. The Higgs field can also
create particles, So the Higgs boson is what happens when
you excite the Higgs field and you get a particle,
but that particle isn't stable, Like, if you have a
Higgs boson sitting in empty space, it will very quickly
turn into other particles. So there's no stable matter made
out of Higgs bosons. So yeah, you can't like build
stuff out of Higgs bosons because it'll just fall apart. Okay,

(19:53):
So then the Higgs field is there, and you're saying
that it's sort of main effect is that it gives
other particles from other fields the feeling of mass, right,
or behavior that feels like mass, and specifically the idea
of mass as it relates to movement. Right, Yeah, we're
talking about inertial mass here. We're talking about how much

(20:14):
force it takes to get something to accelerate. Right, force
equals mass times acceleration. What that mass term really means.
It tells you how to relate the force and the acceleration.
How much of a force do you need in order
to get something to accelerate if you're pushing on the Earth,
it has a huge mass. It takes a really big force.
If you're pushing on a leaf as a tiny mass,

(20:35):
so a little force can give you a pretty good acceleration.
So that's the mass we're talking about. And where does
that mass come from, We don't really know. It's sort
of like a measure of how much energy is stored
inside something. So particles kind of energy stored inside of
them because they interact with the Higgs field. Like the
electron is truly at its core a massless particle, but

(20:55):
it interacts with the Higgs field and that gives it
this like internal stored energy, which gives it inertia. And
that's what we call mass. That's what we call mass
due to the Higgs field, Right, And so like the
Earth is really massive and if I try to push
in it, it'd be really hard to get it to move.
And so that's an effect of the Higgs field. It's
like it's trying to push the Earth, but the Higgs

(21:17):
field is saying like, no, this thing has a lot
of mass. I'm not going to let it move a lot. Yeah,
that's right, but remember, as you just pointed out, the
Higgs field is one way things can get mass. Mass
is really just a measure of internal stored energy. So
if you take for example, a proton, the particles that
make it up, the quarks, they do have some mass
from the Higgs field, but most of the mass of

(21:37):
the proton is from its other internal stored energy, from
the bonds between those quarks, which come from the gluons.
So most of the mass the proton and the neutron
and therefore you and me and the Earth doesn't actually
come from the Higgs field. It comes from the internal
stored energy and protons and neutrons. It comes from the
strong force. So there's lots of different ways to get
internal stored energy, and the Higgs field is one of them.

(22:00):
M So, wait, So, like a proton has a lot
of mass because of the energy that binds the quarks
in it, and that is somehow what makes it hard
to move through the universe. Is there a mechanism for that?
That's not something we understand very well. Like why do
things have inertia when they have energy inside of them?
You know, it's sort of weird to think about. Like
you take a box that has no mass and you

(22:21):
put photons inside of it, and those photons have no mass,
But now that you've stored those photons inside the box,
the box now has mass because you have internal stored energy.
So you can put massless stuff inside a massless box
and get a massive box. Mass is a really weird thing.
It's this property a stored energy that it has inertia,

(22:42):
and the stored inertia kind of mask doesn't have anything
to do with the Higgs field, is what you're saying.
The Higgs field only kind of affects the mass of
individual particles. Yeah, it's one way you can store energy
inside a particle, Like electron has internal stored energy due
to its interactions with the Higgs field. It's like using
the energy of the Higgs field and capturing a little

(23:04):
bit of that energy, and that's what gives it some inertia.
But yeah, most of the sort of internal stored energy
of a proton and neutron doesn't come from the Higgs field.
So like if I have a proton which has quarks
in it, most of the mass of a proton is
not due to the Higgs field then, like only a
very little amount of it. So I guess that makes
you wonder if the Higgs field or zero, would it

(23:24):
even matter. Would it change really the mass of a
proton and everything how everything else works in the universe.
Let's get into that question what does it mean for
the universe and for food trucks everywhere? But first let's
take a quick break or I we're playing what if,

(23:52):
which is a pretty popular genre. I feel like right now,
have you seen that what If show on Disney Plus?
In some of that show? And I've read Random Rose too,
excellent what if books, So there's a lot of fun
what if out there. Yeah, so we're asking what if
the Higgs field were zero? What if we instead of
a universe where the Higgs field wasn't zero, we lived

(24:13):
in a universe where the Higgs field was zero zero
or like gone altogether. And we're talking about if it
were zero rather than if it were gone altogether. Is
you know one thing the other fields can do is
they can relax down to basically almost zero, Like you
can have space but basically no electrons in it. Right.
That means the electron field is going down to its

(24:33):
minimum value. Of course, it's a quantum field, so it's
always going to have some energy stored in it. Maybe
you can break that down for us a little bit
like what does it mean for a field to be
zero or not zero or to have energy in it?
Like it's a fields, it's something that's not substantial, is it?
Is it field? Something substantial? Is sort of a big
question in philosophy, like our field's even real or are
they just sort of a calculation we do in our

(24:55):
heads to try to make predictions from experiments we don't know,
And that could be a whole our little digression. But
the way the fields work mathematically is that you just
sort of think of them as a number or in
some cases a vector at every point in space, and
that field can have energy, which means that that number
can be moving. So fields can have like kinetic energy
if they wiggle, like the value of the field is

(25:17):
going up and down. They can also have potential energy
based on the different kind of field that it is,
and so the points in space can sort of be oscillating,
like the value of the field can be changing, and
wiggles in the field like that are sort of coherent.
Because of the way the field works, it follows the
wave equation that energy sort of propagates through the field
in a coherent way, which is why like a little

(25:39):
packet of energy can move through the field and sort
of stay together. An electron can move across the universe
carrying that packet of energy and not like dissipating out
into the universe. So like if you say like a
field has energy, means it has kind of like a
wiggle to it, like it's pulsating in a way, like
it's not standing still. Yeah, exactly, its pulsating. And because
these are quantum fields, they have to wiggle in very

(26:02):
discrete ways. Like you can have one electron or two
electrons or seven electrons. You can't have one point seven
one electrons, right, because it's a quantum field, which means
it's quantized, which means it has like a ladder of
possible states, not an infinite spectrum. The same way you
can have like one photon or seven photons, but you
can't have one and a half photon. That's because the

(26:23):
field knows how to wiggle in some ways, the same
way of like a guitar string. You know, it can
wiggle at some notes. It can't wiggle at arbitrary notes
because of how you cut off the ends of it. Well,
you haven't seen me play a guitar. I can make
all kinds of horrible sounds and a guitar. I keep
waiting for the first public show of your dad band.
Oh yeah, the grateful dads, shout out to my bandmates again. So,

(26:45):
if the fields can have energy to them, and you're
saying that the Higgs field has some energy to it,
whereas all the other fields have zero energy, like the
electron field, does it have some energy to it? The
electron field and all the other fields have relaxed it
down to very low values, essentially down to zero. Remember,
the history of the universe is one where we are
cooling down. We started out very hot and dense. It

(27:08):
was like the center of the sun, lots of energy,
and all the fields they're all frothing around to the
point where you can't even really think about particles, more
like an ocean rather than droplets of water. But as
the universe expands, then the energy decreases, it gets diluted
and things cool down, and now we're in a sort
of very old, very cold phase of the universe where
the fields are mostly zero everywhere. So everything sort of

(27:31):
like relaxed down to about zero. But the Higgs field didn't.
When the universe was cooling down, the Higgs field got
stuck in sort of like a local minimum. You know,
things tend to like to flow down to low potential
energy the way like water will flow down to the
bottom of a valley. But if you have a little
lip there there's like a little divot in the rock,
the water will get trapped in that little divot. And

(27:52):
that's how you get like, you know, lakes at ten
thousand feet up in the mountains because the little valley
there that traps it. The Higgs field when it was relaxing,
got stuck in one of those little valleys and it's
still there. Well, I guess maybe my question is, like
when these fields relax at the beginning of the universe,
like where did that energy go? Like is it because
the universe expanded and things got spread out or did

(28:14):
that energy like go into making electrons or matter? What
causes a field to like lose its energy. So it's
just because the universe is expanding and so things are
getting more dilute, So the energy just gets more spread out.
So instead of having a lot of energy in a
small amount of space, now you have the same energy
and more space, and so things are just colder and

(28:34):
more spread out and matter gets diluted. As space increases
by like one over distance cubed or have same amount
of energy in the matter and now more volume radiation
things like photons gets deluded even more because it's not
just that space gets bigger you have like more volume
with the same amount of energy, but the actual photons
themselves get red shifted, so they cool down even faster

(28:58):
than the matter. So as the time goes on from
the universe, you have like a radiation dominated portion in
the very early universe, and then that radiation falls off
very quickly and then the matter cools down. Now we're
actually at a time in the universe where we're dark
energy dominated, where most of the energy in the universe
is not in radiation or in matter, and that's just
because of the expansion of the universe. So when the

(29:20):
universe stretched out, all these fields kind of relax or
they got stretched I guess they got kind of stretched out,
kind of like you would stretch out a guitar string,
right like it would lose some of the energy. But
somehow the Higgs field didn't lose some of that energy.
You're saying, like, somehow the Higgs field got stuck with
some energy, but it must have also expanded with the
rest of the universe, So why didn't the Higgs field

(29:40):
lose that energy with the expansion. So the Higgs field
is different from the other fields in the structure. It's
like potential energy. It has a strange sort of potential
energy function, has this double dip in it. We have
a whole podcast episode about how the Higgs gets mass
and its potential energy. We could spend a whole half
hour on that, but it's sufficient to know that the
Higgs field likes to relax in different ways than the

(30:01):
other field. So it has not just like a potential
minimum at zero, it has another potential minimum at a
higher value. So where it's like the other fields, you
can think of them as a simple valley where water
would flow down to the bottom. The Higgs field is different.
It has this like extra little double dips of the
water gets stuck at a higher place and can't make
it all the way down to the bottom. It sounds

(30:21):
like the Higgs field doesn't know how to relax, maybe
needs to take some meditation classes or something. Well, you
don't want the Higgs field to chill out, because the
universe would be very different if it did. I see
you like the Higgs beans stressed out. I like the
universe the way it is, even if that means the
Higgs is kind of tense. I guess we could talk
about like how what the Higgs field doesn't relax, But

(30:42):
the point is that the Higgs field doesn't relax, and
so it has some kind of energy right now, and
it's that energy where our mass comes the massive small
particles comes from. The energy is exactly where the mass
of small particles comes from. Like the electron without the
Higgs field would be massless travel at the speed of light,
you would have no mass. But because the Higgs is there,

(31:02):
the electron interacts with it, and that changes the way
the electron moves because it now has this internal energy
from its interaction with the Higgs field. The interaction, as
you say, it comes from the energy of the Higgs field. Well,
what do you mean, Like, can you maybe explain it
to us, Like it has energy and somehow it gives
that energy too particles to make them slower, or because

(31:23):
it has energy, it caused particles more to move through space.
What's the connection there? So every kind of particle that
we know about, like the electron and the quarks. There's
actually two different versions of them. We call them the
left handed version and the right handed version. And this
has to do with whether their spin is pointed in
the same direction they're moving or not. We've talked about

(31:44):
it on the podcast several times. You can think about
as chirality or helicity, but there's basically two different versions
of every particle, the left handed and the right handed version.
And what the Higgs can do is it can turn
a left handed version into a right handed version. So
you have like a left handed electron flying through space,
the Higgs can turn it into a right handed version,
and then back and forth right. So that's what the

(32:04):
Higgs can do, and this is happening trillions of times
per second. If you have a particle flying through space,
it's like going back and forth. What So I have
an electron in space, it's spinning one way and the
Higgs flips it around. Is that what you're saying, Yes, exactly.
The Higgs can flip a left handed electron into a
right handed electron like it knocks it, like it hits it.

(32:28):
It just makes the spin unstable. What's a good way
to visualize it? Or think about why that happens. So
just because it's a tense and stressed out it likes
to slap electrons around. The way to think about it
is that if the universe can do something, then it happens.
Was So when a left handed electron if flying through space,
it can use the Higgs boson to convert into a

(32:50):
right handed electron. It's a possibility, just the same way
an electron can radiate a photon. And so if electron
is flying through the universe long enough, then it will happen.
This is the kind of thing electrons do. They do
everything that they are allowed to do. All the possibilities
eventually come to reality. And so left handed electrons can
convert to right handed electrons and back and forth, and

(33:13):
the Higgs boson is what's required to do this. And
so essentially the electron that we know and love, what
we call the electron, is actually this like combination of
the left handed electron and the right hand electron combined
with the Higgs boson. You need the Higgs boson there
to glue them together. So the electron that we know
is sort of like a mishmash of the left handed electron,

(33:34):
the right handed electron with the Higgs boson there to
glue them together into this massive particle. The left handed
electron the right hand electron by themselves neither of them
have mass, but the way they move to the universe
constantly flip flapping back and forth using the Higgs boson.
The overall motion of that thing is something that has
energy and moves like a particle with mass. You mean,

(33:57):
like the Higgs boson is what causes it to flip
back and forth, and because it's flipping back and forth,
it makes it harder to move somehow, and then that's
where where the mask comes from. Yeah, precisely. The way
you can think about, like photons flying through empty space
go at the speed of light, but photons flying through
material they have to stop and interact with all those atoms,

(34:17):
so there's zig zagging back and forth, and the effective
speed of that photon is lower than the speed of
light in a vacuum. An electron moving through space is
interacting with the Higgs field and doing that gives it mass.
It doesn't slow it down. It's a different kind of interaction.
It changes its internal stored energy, makes this new sort
of effective particle not a composite particle. It's not like

(34:40):
we're talking about how the proton has quarks inside of it.
We're not saying the electron literally has a left handed
and right handed particle inside them which click together. This
is like a new elementary particle that is made of
these interactions. Where you're saying an electron, it's not really
an electron, like an electron is really to half electrons. Well,

(35:01):
I'm saying the electron that we know and love and
then we eat in our cereal every morning is different
from the kinds of electrons we would have in the
universe without the Higgs boson. So without the Higgs boson,
not only would all these particles be massless, but they
would all be split into their left and right handed versions.
And the same is true of every other particle. Not split,
but like each particle would have to decide if it

(35:22):
was spinning one way or the other, and they would
stay that way. Yes, exactly, they would stay that way
and they wouldn't convert. So left handed electrons would fly
through the universe massless at the speed of light and
not like flip flop back and forth to right handed electrons.
So I'm an electron in the universe. I'm sitting here
or flying around and I'm pointing one way, but because
the Higgs field is there, the Higgs field is like, hey,

(35:45):
here's some energy, I guess, or here's a mechanism for
you to flip back and forth, and so why not
I flip back and forth one hundred trillion trillion times
per second. Yeah, So the top cork is more massive.
It flips back and forth more often than the electron,
which has less mass than the top quark. And that's
why top quarks have more mass, because they're more affected
by the Higgs boson. It couples to them more tightly,

(36:07):
it does this flip flopping back and forth more often.
And it just so happens that this flip flopping effect
is sort of related to how it moves through the
universe in a way that it feels like it has inersion. Exactly.
You do the calculation for all these interactions, and you say,
what is it like for this particle to move? And
you get exactly the same effect as if you had

(36:27):
an elementary particle that really had mass on its own,
if it was just like a property of that particle,
you get exactly the same equations of motion. So these
two massless particles flip flopping back and forth between each other,
moving exactly the same way as if you had an
elementary particle with its own mass. And so it's all
due to this kind of unrelaxed energy that the Higgs

(36:49):
field has. And so I guess now we can ask
a question like what if that field was zero, Like
what if the universe had a Higgs field that was
able to relax that maybe meditated it's a medication perhaps
chilled out and went to zero. Right, that's the kind
of the question we're asking today. And so the sort
of three big effects Number one is that all these

(37:12):
particles would be split. Instead of having left and right
handed particles sort of merged together into the particles we know,
we'd have separate versions of everything as we just talked about.
So the top left and top right would be different
particles instead of being combined together into the massive top sandwich. Wait,
what do you mean? Like it would still be separate particles,
they just kind of wouldn't be flipping back and forth. Well, right, now,

(37:33):
the top left doesn't exist as its own particle, right,
what we have is the top qurk top quark is
a combination of top left and top right. But a
top quark can spin left, a top quark can be
left handed. There's a bit of a subtle mathematical distinction
here between chirality, which is sort of like the nature
of the particle mathematically, is it left handed or right
handed particle? And holicity, which is actually talking about the

(37:55):
physical spin of the particle or we're talking about here,
is more like a quantum mechanical label of these things
being left or right handed, and that has to do
with how the weak force interacts with them. Remember, the
weak force only interacts with left handed particles and not
right handed particles, and so this is more about that
quantum mechanical left handedness, not the physical spin of the particle.

(38:17):
All right, Well, then that's one effect that having a
zero Higgs field would have on the universes that I
guess particles like the electron and the top quark would
not be flip flopping back and forth. Yeah, exactly, These fermions,
instead of being combined together into the particles that we know,
they would be totally separate. We'd have two completely different
versions of every particle. And that's actually connected to one

(38:37):
of the other big implications of having the Higgs field,
which is how it connects the electromagnetic force to the
weak force. Let's get into that effect of having a
zero Higgs field, but first let's take another quick break.

(39:02):
Right we are imagining a universe today where the Higgs
field is zero, and so we talked about what the
Higgs field is, kind of why it has a non
zero or what has some energy to it whit can relax,
and kind of what the effect of that is on particles,
which is to give them the feeling that they have mass.

(39:22):
And so I guess if you take away the Higgs field,
or at least just make it zero, then particles wouldn't
feel like they have mass. That's what we just talked about,
right that particles wouldn't be flip flopping back and forth,
and so they would move through the universe like they
didn't have mass exactly. It would move to the universe
without mass, and they would be split into these left

(39:44):
handed and right handed versions. It would be very different
kind of universe. But it doesn't just affect the matter particles.
Where we're talking about right now is the fermions, the electrons,
the quarks, all the things that make up matter. It
would also affect the forces that exist in the universe,
not just the matter. Oh you mean the Higgs field
also gives mass to forces. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly.

(40:05):
Remember our story. Why we even know the Higgs field
is there is because Peter Higgs saw this connection between
electricity and magnetism, which was one force, and the weak force,
and he realized, oh, these two things actually click together
mathematically into a bigger piece of this sort of universe puzzle.
Except there was a missing bit there, and that was
the Higgs field. But he recognized that electricity and magnetism

(40:28):
and the weak force are very very similar. So what
the Higgs boson actually does is it unifies these two things.
It connects electricity and magnetism and the weak forces together
and makes a new force called electro weak. But when
it does so, it fundamentally changes both of those forces.
Wait what somehow the Higgs field energy makes it like

(40:50):
it merges the two forces together, or it just like
kind of provides a connection. So without the Higgs field,
we would have two different other forces that were separate
but very similar to each other, and the Higgs field
changes both of them, and it sort of breaks them
a little bit. So, for example, like there's the electromagnetic force,
which makes things with electrical charge repel or be attracted

(41:12):
to each other, like electrons repelling each other, or a
plus in a minus being attracted to each other over
electric charge. And we also have the weak force, which
is weak, but it also kind of makes things repel
or attract depending on the weak charge. And so somehow
the Higgs boson modifies both of them. Yes, so what
we are seeing is the Higgs boson already having done

(41:33):
its modification. Electricity, magnetism and the weak force are after
the Higgs has already done its work. So if you
start in the universe without the Higgs field, you have
two other different forces we call them hypercharge forces and
isospin forces, and the Higgs field mixes those up and
makes it like a new, weird combination of those things

(41:53):
into what we today call electricity, magnetism and the weak force.
So without the Higgs field, so untangle that it's not
like you had the electromagnetic force and the weak force,
in the Higgs field MUSHes the two. It's like you
had two other forces and then the Higgs field MUSHes
them together into something that we still call two things. Yes, exactly,

(42:15):
and we still call them two things because it MUSHes
them together in an unequal way. So it takes the
particles of these other sort of pure forces, mixes them
up together to give us the photon the Z in
the two ws. But it's not equal about it. It
leaves the photon with no mass, but it gives the
WS and the Z a lot of mass. And so
it changes electricity and magnetism and the weak force in

(42:37):
very different ways. And that's why the weak force is weak,
because the Higgs field gives so much mass to its
particles that it makes them very short lived and very ineffective. Now,
this mushing of forces happens because the Higgs field exists,
or because it has energy. Like if the Higgs field
still exists but had zero energy, would these forces still

(42:57):
join up. The forces would not join up, because the
Higgs fields exists and has energy, and it interacts with
these particles. Also, it doesn't just interact with fermions. It
also interacts with these sort of pure force particles, and
in doing so it actually gives up some of the
Higgs bosons. The Higgs field actually can oscillate in lots
of different ways. There are four different Higgs bosons that

(43:19):
it can make. Three of them get used up in
order to make the WS and the Z massive. They
get sort of like eaten by the W and the
Z as they get made. So then if the Higgs
field has zero energy, which is what we're asking today,
then what would happen These two forces, or this force
that we call the electricweek would split into these other
two forces. Yeah, exactly. First of all, there'd be four

(43:41):
Higgs bosons in our universe instead of one, right, and
electricity magnetism would not be entertangled in the way that
they are now. So we would not have the photon,
we would not have the W, we would not have
the Z. Wait, what do you mean we're gonna have
the photon? We wouldn't have light without the Higgs boson
or the Higgs field. The electromagnetic field that we of
today is actually like a distortion of two other fields

(44:04):
mixed together by the Higgs boson. So the photon is
actually a combination of two other force particles. So without
the Higgs field, you'd have these four particles we call
them the X and the W, one two three. The
photon is a mixture of the X and the W three.
So then you would have a universe without light, or
you would have a universe dead with something else that

(44:25):
we would call light. Yeah, we'd have a universe with
different force particles. None of them would be exactly like
the photon, though they would all be massless. I don't
know if we'd call one of them light or not,
but it would be a very different universe with very
different forces. Like I wonder if the effect would be
that the electromagnetic force is the same, but the weak
force would be different, you know what I mean? Like
it would be universe that we could compare with ours

(44:47):
and be like, oh, the electromagnetic force is the same.
There's still something we call the acts like a photon,
but then everything else is different. There would be a particle,
the X particle, which is similar sort of to the
photon in that it's a single particle that mediates a
force that would be about as powerful as electricity and magnetism.
And that X particle, which would mediate the hypercharge force

(45:08):
in that universe, would also interact with all these particles.
You would be able to interact with all the quarks
and the leptons and all those kinds of things. So
it'd be sort of similar to the photon. And then
we'd have these other three particles, the W one, two three,
from what we call the isospin force. It would be
sort of similar to the weak interaction, except it would
be as powerful as electromagnetism because it doesn't have the

(45:31):
Higgs Boson field sort of slowing it down. But it
would only affect things with the charge for that force, right, Like,
it wouldn't necessarily affect the electrons. It would only affect
left handed particles, but it would affect the electron. Yeah,
just the way the weak force, for example, does interact
with the electron today. Interesting now, and you said there's
a third effect of having a zero Higgs field too, Yeah,

(45:52):
that's right. The third effect, which it might be the biggest,
is the one that would blow us all up, the biggest,
bigger than taking away the mass of the electron and
splitting and totally changing the electromagnetic force and making photons disappear.
Oh yeah, this is the one would literally blow up
your spot. I mean, it would make all the particles massless, right,

(46:12):
and so the electron is massless. The quarks are massless,
and as we talked about earlier, most of the mass
in the universe doesn't come from the Higgs field, but
the constructions that you make out of those particles do
rely in the Higgs field doing its thing. You know,
for example, you want to build an atom, you need
to do that atom electron that does have mass. If
you took a hydrogen atom and you suddenly made that

(46:35):
electron massless, what would happen, Well, it would fly off
at the speed of light. Right, A proton can't hold
on to an electron that's moving at the speed of light.
So the whole construction binding electrons into that proton to
make an atom rely in the particles having a little
bit of mass. Without that mass, everything would be totally different. Well,
it couldn't hold on to the electron where it was,

(46:58):
But I wonder if it could still, you know, trap
the electron somehow, even if it's moving at this speed
of light, like for example, a black hole can trap
photons even though they move at the speed of light. Yeah,
you need a much stronger force to hold onto the
electron or it would need to orbit like a much
higher distance for example. But the fundament the whole structure
of the atom would be very very different. Electrons in

(47:19):
their current orbitals, if you suddenly reduced the Higgs field
down to zero, they would fly off at the speed
of light. So basically all of our atoms would explode.
It probably is possible to make new sort of stable
constructions out of these new particles, but it would be
totally different from what we experienced today. M Yeah, So
like if you flip the switch to a zero for

(47:40):
the Higgs field, now everything would explode. But if you
start at the universe with a zero Higgs field, there
would be maybe a universe with planets and stuff in it.
It just would look super different than what it does today.
It would definitely look super different from what it does today,
and it would make all sorts of probably really interesting,
complicated emergence structures that are hard for us to predict.
It requires like solving the strong force equations to understand

(48:04):
how those massless quarks might come together to make stable
particles out of which you could build bigger things. I
don't know how to do that. It's very complicated. Like
even today, if you said start from quarks and electrons
and predict chemistry, we don't know how to do that.
We don't know how to do calculations to predict what
chemistry would happen, not to mention biology and psychology, and

(48:24):
so we can't do that for other universes. Also, can
you predictive food trucks would still be here? I'm just
saying you said the word inevitable earlier that was really
more hopeful than based on hard calculations. Unfortunately, we cannot
predict whether food trucks would exist in a universe without
the Higgs boson. It's a deep question of philosophy. Well,
I guess maybe the last question we can ask about

(48:45):
this strange and weird different universe is what would it
mean for gravity? Like, if the Higgs field would zero,
would gravity be different at all? Or could the universe
still make like black holes and planets using gravity. Yeah,
it's an important thing to floor because a lot of
people connect the concept of mass with gravity, right, and
so they think that the Higgs boson is maybe responsible

(49:07):
for gravity somehow. But remember that the connection between the
Higgs boson and mass is only for elementary particles. There
are other ways to get mass. That connection is not
really that deep and tight, But gravity is very deeply
connected to energy and that includes mass. So none of
this would change the role of gravity at all. Right,
Gravity would still operate. It would still bend space. It

(49:28):
would still change the path of particles even if they're
all massless and moving at the speed of light. Remember
that gravity can bend space that photons move through, and
so gravity would still exist and you could still get
black holes on all sorts of other stuff. Gravity would
still tug things together, right, because gravity sort of exists
almost in a way outside of quantum fields, right, or

(49:50):
at least the way it's formulated by Einstein. Yeah, general
relativity is not a quantum theory. We don't understand the
connections between general relativity and quantum theory at all. And
so you're right, if we're changing one of the knobs
of the quantum fields, that doesn't change our understanding of gravity.
So there would still be energy in the universe even
if fundamental particles didn't have mass, and so there would
still be gravitational effects on everything. Would you still have protons? Right?

(50:14):
Like I wonder, like you know, if the Higgs field
was zero, quarks would have no mass, would they still
bind together those due to the strong force the strong
force would still be there. It would still exist. The
strong force is not affected by the Higgs boson the
way these other forces are, because the gluons are massless
and they don't interact with those Higgs bosons, So you
would still have the strong force. Probably it would be
able to bind things together into protons or proton like structures,

(50:37):
but they would be different because the quarks now have
no mass, and so that would definitely change them. They
might be like bigger and fluffier than the protons we
know today. I wonder if you could even like catch
quarks to make protons because they're moves ziving around at
the speed of light. Yeah, it's hard to think about,
all right, Well, it sounds like the answer to the
question of whether the universe would be different if the

(50:59):
Higgs field were row is a big fat yes, a big,
massive heavy yes. It would make the fundamental particles move
at the speed of light, which would be totally trippy,
like the quarts and the electronics you're made out of
would be zipp around around as fast as light. It
would change the forces like we wouldn't have magnets. I
guess we wouldn't have electromagnetism the way it is, and

(51:21):
we'd also have more Higgs bosons. So instead of winning
one Nobel Prize, maybe we could win four. Oh yeah,
that would reduce a number of murdered physicists in your mystery.
Well it would, I guess it would give you like
three sequels, and so maybe the body count would be higher.
Oh man, there's no suspicious death of potentially Nobel Prize

(51:43):
winning pusiness. I want that on the record. I know
it sounds it sounds kind of suspicious. In fact, it's
kind of a funny rule that Nobel put in his
word right, It's almost like he was asking for it.
It's almost like he foresaw this true crime podcast. He
was a visionary. All right, Well, we hope that made
you think a little bit about the universe that we

(52:03):
do live in, Like how precarious it is. First of upgrade,
because we don't know if the Higgs field is going
to flip to having zero energy. It could happen anytime,
that's right. Irresponsible particle physicists might trigger the Higgs field
to collapse down to its lower vacuum state, changing the
very nature of the universe, and food trucks yeah, and
so we live in a precarious universe as the way

(52:24):
it is for forces that are way outside of our control.
So I guess maybe the real lesson here is to
appreciate the universe that we live in, because it could
have been very different and we wouldn't be here. That's right,
So go out and patronize that food truck. We hope
you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.

(52:48):
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast
from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or work ever you listen to your favorite shows