Unlike some theories or areas of inquiry, you can’t really understand any of the Standard Model or quantum theory unless you understand all of it. That makes it a very tough nut to crack.
It took me a decade of studying all of it nearly every day to get to where I could make sense of it in some cohesive way.
How the Higgs Field (Actually) Gives Mass to Elementary Particles.
This is just too simplified to be worth anything. It doesn’t work like that. These metaphors are frickin’ useless. They make you dumber than you were before.
I know Strassler is a physicist so he definitely understands how the Higgs Field and how the Higgs Mechanism works (I’ve read other things of his more complex than this), so it’s not lack of knowledge. In trying to make what’s happening intelligible to the non-trained, though, he just makes it too basic to be worth anything.
To offer a better explanation, the Higgs Field is the only field that has a non-zero equilibrium constant value, or to put it another way it has a non-zero vacuum expectation value — unlike all other known fields. This means that in (notionally) empty space, it can still “operate” on other types of particles (field excitations) in that space. Thus, having a non-zero vacuum expectation value means the Higgs interacts with other fields and gives previously-massless particle mass by two different methods (not important to know about here). So why doesn’t the photon gain mass by interacting with the Higgs field? Heh, well, it’s because the model would be inaccurate, basically. Also, the Higgs field has no color charge (related to the strong force) and is not electrically charged, so photons can’t “see” it. Thus, they remain massless1
There is a much deeper, but much, much better explanation that involves symmetry breaking and the linear combinations of the four SM gauge fields, but you must have a lot of grounding in a lot of different areas and a very big brain to understand that. But that’s just to give you breadcrumbs to follow, if you are of a mind to do so.
Back to the topic at hand, though. The very short explanation of why the Higgs field gives mass to most elementary particles (the gauge bosons, quarks and leptons) is because its vacuum — or resting — state is one of excitation. Again, quite the opposite of other fields where their resting state is zero energy. For our purposes here, I’m going to be a a bit circularly-referential as the real deeper explanation is just too much for almost anyone reading this, but the Higgs field gives mass to excitations (particles) of those fields that can “see” it. It does this by donating a little energy to them, and in this universe energy equals mass2. And it’s as simple as that.
That said, most mass in the universe does not come from the Higgs field/mechanism. The Higgs just explains why particles that should be massless in the Standard Model have intrinsic mass. Most mass in the universe arises from the strong interaction in the nucleus, which is not related to Higgs directly.
Isn’t that fun?
It’s sad but enlightening to hear all the female-to-male transition stories where the newly-minted man is shocked and saddened to realize that he will no long be appreciated just for existing.
Welcome to life as a man. We have worse clothes, die younger, and generally speaking no one gives a single shit if we live or die; we are disposable. It is lonely and very isolated. But at least we have pockets.
Preach it, brother! Seriously, a lot of my IT knowledge does come from spending vast, vast amounts of time proving it’s not the network causing issues, but rather someone’s poorly-written code, poorly-designed application, or other completely non-network issue.
I’d estimate I’ve spent a solid six months of my entire life doing just that alone.
One of the things I deeply like and appreciate about Aella is that she firmly and fully believes that women are not in fact children and acts that way in her own life, no matter what she does.
This makes me like her as a person even if I feel like I probably would not actually get along all that well with her in real life (I think we’d annoy the fuck out of one another).
I agree with a commenter. That got hit by a PARM 1 or 2 mine. That’s the first one I’ve ever seen used in actual combat.
Why are so many roles paying so little?
IT is a worse field now than when I went into it, by far. The roles are vastly more complex and the pay has mostly stagnated or declined at all but the very top end. Help desk and sys admin jobs that paid 50K-80K back in 2005 still pay that now — and that is in nominal dollars, so that is an enormous pay cut in real dollars.
If I were to do it all again and having to start fresh, I would not go into this field. There is very little chance of advancement now, the pay is low, and the chance of your job being offshored or outsourced is high.
“Hollow out” is a good way to put it. Economists tell us that NAFTA was a net benefit to everyone. They have pretty little charts and graphs to “prove” it. However, those do not take into account much of the actual economic effects, the political follow-on impacts, the foreign policy implications, international competitiveness effects, or the necessity of domestic production and supply chains in the case of war.
Economics, therefore, captures maybe 10-20% of what’s important about trade agreements like NAFTA while lying about it in the name of the plutocrats the entire time. Good work.
My assessment is that Harris will be slightly better than Biden for Ukraine, while Trump will be substantially worse. And one big reason is that the Trump campaign is being indirectly bankrolled and assisted by Russian money and propaganda, and to a lesser extent by the Chinese as well.
Trump is loyal to one thing, and that is cold hard currency. He’ll never quite be Putin’s lapdog, but he’ll be tame enough as long as the money spigot keeps flowing. And that’ll mean bad things for Ukraine.
Yeah, seeing that lately has made me laugh. But I think a lot of FA types do believe you diet for a few months and then are done. Not the way it actually works, though. Which is of course why they fail at it. I’ve been working out for six years straight now. If I stopped, I’d lose 80% of my strength gains within six months.
Such is life.
People on r/scams crack me up sometimes.
At least they’re checking I guess, but they can get an email from “russianscam@scammy.net” that links to a website called iwillstealyourmoney.com and then post, “I got this email. Is it a scam? I can’t tell for sure.”
Hmm, I wonder.
I just saw it on Reddit today, so don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. That said, it’s strange when women are like, “All you care about is SEX!!!!!!!1111” when you’ve mentioned like a dozen other dealbreakers.
And then you say, “Wanting kids is also a dealbeaker. We have no future and should not have a relationship if you do want that. If we have nothing we enjoy doing for fun in common, also a dealbreaker. If you are super clingy, also a dealbreaker. But yes, not wanting a sexual relationship is in fact also a dealbreaker.”
Then it’s the “All you want is SEX!” again. It makes no damn sense.
So my question is, why are so many women so oddly sex-obsessed? 😉
Well, except in Kursk.
To clarify something, it’s completely wrong for incels and others weirdos to attack and harass any specific woman, no matter what she’s done. It’s pointless and counterproductive in addition to being morally misguided. It just doesn’t help.
But it’s a fine and even a good thing to do to observe that women’s mental health is in decline, that social media is causing grievous harm especially to women, that feminism has gone off the rails completely by its demand for power with no responsibility or accountability, and that a lot of things that women demand and do harm men. And that no one really seems to care one way or the other what men say or feel about anything, while believing that they are ravening sex beasts with no emotions at all.
Those things all should be discussed out in the open, and even more so the more people declaim so vociferously that they are not real problems.