We know that all material objects in this universe including the electrons and quarks possess mass. While this sounds very simple, this very fact bothered physicists for a long time. How do particles and other bodies get their mass? As scientists pondered over this question, Peter Higgs came up with his wonderful theory: He proposed that some fundamental stuff or field pervades this entire space and that as particles interact with this field they get their mass. Apparently without interacting with the Higgs field, particles can’t have mass. But this proposition sounds rather strange. Mass is a fundamental property of material objects. It is a measure of the amount of matter in them. So any object or particle that is made of matter will have mass. So, where is the need for objects to interact with something else to acquire their mass? Why do we need to bring in the Higgs stuff to explain the mass of fundamental particles? Well, a simple explanation and a slight modification of Higgs theory will clear the confusion.
In our every day life, we measure the mass of objects with the help of common balance. Also we can know the mass of objects indirectly by measuring their weight. But we can’t use these methods of estimating mass in the outer space where no gravity exists. There, we need to measure the inertia of objects to estimate their mass. We know that inertia is the resistance offered by objects when we try to move them. The more the mass of an object, the more will be its inertia and the more will be the force required to move it from rest. But inertia of an object or the resistance offered by an object not only depends upon its mass but also upon the medium or the environment in which it exists. For example, it requires more force to move objects in water than in air. That is, the more the density and viscosity of the medium, the more will be the resistance and the more will be the force required to move objects. And conversely, the less viscous and less dense the medium, the less will be the frictional resistance and the less will be the force required to move objects.
In other words, inertia of an object (or the resistance offered by an object when we try to move it) not only depends upon its mass but also upon the frictional resistance of the medium. The same expressed in mathematical terms:
I ∝ m x fr
where
I is the inertia
m is the mass of the object
fr is the frictional resistance offered by the medium (or environment)
From this, we can learn that for inertia to become manifest, there must be some medium or some resistance in the environment. If there was nothing in the space and no resistance in the environment, inertia would become nonexistent and we wouldn’t be able to know the mass of fundamental particles. Also, if there wasn’t this thing called inertia in Nature, every object, tiny and big, would get accelerated to infinite velocities even with slightest force which is obviously prohibited in Nature. This implies that absolute vacuum doesn’t exist in Nature, rather our entire space is permeated by some resistive fluid medium. And our scientists have given a name to that stuff filling the universe i.e. Higgs field. But unlike what the scientists believe, what the Higgs ‘field’ gives to particles is inertia and not their mass.
Actually people have known and believed in the existence of some subtle medium or some fundamental stuff pervading this entire universe since ages and which they have called with different names in different times and different contexts. For example in ancient Hindu scripts it was mentioned as ‘Akash’, one of the ‘pancha bhutas’ or five elements that made this universe. And in the pre-modern era, it was known by the name ‘Ether’. Modern day scientists describe that as Higgs field in one context and dark matter in another context without realizing that they both are just one thing. And on this blog, we have described the same as cosmic ocean of photons or ultra-photons. And despite the different names and descriptions given, they all are one and the same, and the same one thing will explain all the phenomena in Nature from inertia to gravity and the wave like behavior of particles in DSE.
People may argue that Michelson Morley experiment had disproved the existence of ether. But if that was true, Michelson experiment would also disprove Higgs field and dark matter. If at all the experiment disproved something, it was just our misconception of the ether and not actually the ether.
Coming back to our discussion on Higgs, the proposition of the existence of Higgs field puts the first law of Newton in jeopardy. The law states that 1) an object at rest continues to be at rest and 2) an object in uniform motion continues to be in the same uniform motion unless acted upon by external force. While the first part of this law still holds true, the Higgs theory clearly disproves the second half of it. Because of the frictional resistance of the space conferred by the Higgs medium, any object moving in space is ought to come to rest at some point in time. Or, in other words, with Higg’s field pervading our entire space, the scenario of a moving body with no external force acting upon it doesn’t simply exist and so Newton’s first law becomes irrelevant in this Universe. And the story doesn’t stop there. The existence of Higgs field calls for review of many other scientific theories.
Contrary to the prevailing belief, it neither requires costly experiments nor complicated maths to do science but rather commonsense. But unfortunately, commonsense has disappeared from modern science as it has become purely mathematical. While scientists have been successful in explaining the Nature in mathematical terms, they have been failing to translate that into rational physical models. It is questioning of the irrational beliefs which paved the way to science. But this questioning attitude, the very basic foundation of science, has disappeared from the discipline of science nowadays. As people confuse science for technology, they blindly believe in everything that gets taught as science, however irrational and weird that may be. People need to realize that science and technology are two different things and that technology can be built without a thorough understanding of the underlying physics. For example radio was invented when scientists knew little about electromagnetic waves. While a better understanding of Nature definitely helps build better technology, technology can’t be argued as a blanket proof of science. If people remain as critical and skeptical in science as they do in politics and religion, they will realize that many of our modern scientific theories need rewriting.
