Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Mass & Velocity

That is exactly what science is saying.

Remember we don't actually "see" or "measure" the Higgs particle in the LHC we measure energy which disappears out of our SPACETIME grid and suddenly reappears in a decay chain that we can see in our SPACETIME grid.

So at no stage have we ever really seen a Higgs boson in our SPACETIME we can see an interaction which is typical of how particles react and matches all the rules of particle behaviour but we never actually see it in our spacetime.

So we have either an unseen partilce in the Higgs Boson or we are breaking the rules of conservation of energy twice in that we have energy disappearing out of space and sometime later energy reappearing which just happens to balance.

I should also add that us QM nuts doubt there really is SPACETIME grid or even particles we believe this is just an illussion of wave behaviour of QM energy so the simplification is difficult even for us.

Thanks. This gets better all the time!

The question still remains, though, if something is not in spacetime and not in the Universe; where is it?

As we have defined above there is nothing not in the universe there is only things not in spacetime.

Define something we have discussed that isn't in the universe .. infact I have firmly placed QM in the universe which under the old GR/SR universe it wasn't and caused people issues with things popping in and out of existance? Now QM objects simply pop in and out of spacetime but definitely within the universe.

There is a neat article picture where scientists have started to try and use phasespace representations to connect the hidden world to our physical world we see ... http://phys.org/news/2012-12-revealing-quantum.html

Higgs field is in the universe but not in spacetime it is that simple and easily identifieable by the very way we detect the higgs.

Your only other viable explaination is there is the possibilities of double conservation of energy violations of spacetime that have the same tragectory as what a hidden particle would have and ........ (insert your own explaination)

If the higgs and standard model have done nothing else they have clarified to a large extent that SPACETIME is not the entire universe, there is a whole side of it we can't see except by field and energy interactions. If you accept we have found a Higgs you have to accept the new definition of the universe, as a scientist I have no option but to accept it because I can't come up with another explaination outside the standard model.

I guess that is what perplexes me with your reponse things are more clear about the universe not less clear.

I don't think I could. The question arose from your saying: " No field is really in the universe..." which made me think: "OK, where are they, then?"

......In the same way that energy can be borrowed from the vacuum, then immediately repaid; the vacuum can borrow energy from a system as long as it repays it straight away. Thus the amount that seems to vanish must be identical to that which is returned.

Just a thought, and you did ask!

This highlights a common problem with popular science books. What is clear to an expert may be much less obvious to an amateur.

I found this a good read, though I might find it a better read next time around:

The Higgs Boson vs the Spacetime Metric
http://www.johnagowan.org/higgsx.html

Interesting, certainly, but it's going to take a while and probably several reads to digest.

I was not entirely serious when I wrote this, but the more I think about it.....Someone, shoot it down before I start getting more crackpot ideas.

It's not such a stupid idea except the having to pay back the energy instantly why can't you borrow it for much longer :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe

=> The zero-energy universe hypothesis states that the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero





Not saying it's right but it is a valid thought :-)

While the energy is borrowed by the vacuum there is an observable imbalance in the energy of the original system, which would violate the law of conservation of energy.

Laws can only be violated if no one sees you doing it.
(that was the single malt talking)

The following is a mix of questions and statements. The statements are really questions as well, as I would appreciate comments on their correctness, or otherwise.

I apologise if some of it is repetitive, but, as usual, time is short, and I'm trying to pull together questions and answers so as to make sense of them.

1. The Higgs field permeates everything, but can it be said to be in spacetime?

2. If the Higgs field is not in spacetime; where is it?

3. Does the same apply to all/any other fields?

4. The Higgs particle should not be thought of as a solid object, rather it is a disturbance in the Higgs field, similar to a ripple on the surface of water.

5. The Higgs particle cannot be detected directly, it is so short-lived it can be detected only as a result of its decay into other particles.

6. If Higgs particles are a constant characteristic of the Higgs field, but decay in a small fraction of a second, they must also be constantly "created". Does this mean they are virtual particles, constantly coming into being and decaying?

7. If Higgs particles are virtual particles, would their energy not be borrowed from the vacuum; in which case would there be any violation of the law of conservation of energy?

8. The vacuum is part of the Universe, but is it in spacetime?

A Higgs field exists anywhere a charged field has a vacuum expectation value. So at a layman level anywhere you have the vacuum of space we would expect to see the higgs field. I put in the word "expect" because the LHC exists in one spot in spacetime and we have an underlying qualification that we assume there is nothing special about our area of spacetime.

Is it in spacetime is a tricky question lets talk about a field you would know well being the magnetic field. We can explain to a layman that quantum spin of the atoms creates the magnetic field but to explain how that creates a field with some relationship to spacetime at a layman level is well near on impossible.

Read the magnetic field wikipedia entry and tell me if that says a magnetic field is in spacetime or not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field

This is why I think we are going to have create a simplified version of QM to be taught at school.

I can walk you through a simplified QM if you really want but probably if you just read up on a QM photon you will probably get the basic QM idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon




In QM yes as per above there is nothing special about the higgs field.




There is a division on this even within QM scientists. I do not personally believe it or any elementary particle is solid and real but that is my personal view not an agreed science.

Sascha's article on nutty nuts versus real realists is one of the best for layman to understand the issue.

http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/are_you_real_quantum_mechanics-90221




Correct



Correct as there are for any fields you are more familar with.

In the Standard Model photons are a consequence of physical laws having a certain symmetry at every point in spacetime.

What you are calling popping into and out of existance is a simple quantum oscillation.




In quantum field theory everything is virtual particles which then becomes fields.

The question then becomes is Energy real or is it a consequence of the above?

QM demands conservation of quantum spin and therefore is energy actually an illussion of that fact, just another rainbow. There is no science agreed answer on that right now but we will probably have the answer within a reasonable timeframe with the discovery of a spin-0 boson in the higgs.

You might for example want to look at this.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23042-cloud-of-atoms-goes-beyond-absolute-zero.html
http://www.livescience.com/25959-atoms-colder-than-absolute-zero.html

Be prepared to see the weird and whacky come out about energy in the next few years. It will be one of the first big pushes now we have the higgs understanding.



As we have defined spacetime above no it is the other way around spacetime is in the universe if we define the universe as being the QM definition.

This is one of the most fundemental shifts with the discovery of the higgs that QM universe becomes more fundemental than GR/SR spacetime.

Topical to this shift in science thinking

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-einstein-emc2-outer-space.html

Ok, this is an almost completely uninformed question about the subject of your link. I think that what Dr. Lebed is saying is that there would be no radiation from cold hydrogen (my extrapolation) in flat space. But isn't space pretty much filled with the 21 cm hydrogen radiation? I would think that most of that would come from cold hydrogen in flat space.

Possibly Dr. Lebed is looking at something different from what I am thinking of. And of course I suspect that Dr. Lebed know one heck of a lot more about the subject than I do.

Bill Gill

Bill correct but it is kicked out from a place with very high gravity called a sun thus you need to control the experiment and have a large change in gravity. Remember it's the spontaneous excitation rate thats of interest not the radiation.

Here is the test:

1.) Build a sealed canister put in a detector and hydrogen
2.) You are on earth at current get a stable reading of excite events per unit time
3.) Send the canister out into space far enough for gravity to be alot less.
4.) Get reading of of excite per unit time.


Do readings in 2 and 4 differ by a scientifically significant margin.

If you wanted a reliablity test I guess you could add in

5.) Bring spacecraft back and splash down in ocean
6.) Check excite events per unit time is again that of step 2.


This is QM asking questions and probing GR now it thinks it understands it better.

Did you understand the temperature below absolute zero reference above they actually explain it badly I think I can do better if you need?

Ok, it took me a minute to find what you were talking about in regard to negative temperature. That is a different article on phys.org. Anyway I'm not sure I understood it. If I think about it for a while I might be able to figure out what they are talking about, but I'm not sure. The same old problem, That's not what I was taught, so it must be wrong. The problem with that attitude is that it may not be wrong, I just may have been taught only a part of what is happening, or maybe the teachers hadn't found out about the new stuff yet. Keeping up with advanced physics is sometimes a bit of a job.

Bill Gill

The Wiki article doesn't specifically say if electric/magnetic fields are in spacetime, but they were apparently important in the development of S R from which spacetime emerged, so a layperson might be forgiven for assuming that fields exist in spacetime.

I read the photon article, I think I have a general grasp of that, but I still have trouble creating a "visual" image of somewhere that is outside spacetime.

I liked Vongehr's article, but as far as the division is concerned I shall stay comfortably on the fence, with at least one foot in the "nutty nuts' camp".



Eureka! At last I think I have grasped why you have been asking whether or not energy is real. I think I shall go and make a round of tea, think about this a bit and, hopefully, come back later.

Pulling bits of threads together for you

Read Ethan's article

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/01/02/what-we-learn-just-by-being-here/

Hopefully you will get the key point relative to this theme



This includes zero or infinity just for you Bill S.

Ethan has done a wonderful job at simplifying what requires a huge amount of mathematics to show under QFT.

So lets bring in another piece of the puzzle in our discussion which is Quantum Spin.

So we have these virtual particles and we have the concept of spin but the virtual particles actually spinning in the classic ball or earth rotation sense. The unequivocal answer is yes and there are a number of lines of proof. This can catch even physicists out in that they may not imagine that something that is not quite classical can behave in a classic way you may want to look at the exchange between Lubos Motl and Aidan Randle-Conde it is worth a read (http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/the-electron-is-spinning-after-all.html)

Lubos correctly identifies the facts about electron and proton spin first define what classic spin is defined as



Now identify a way to test it classically



There are more technical physical tests but the above should easily convince anyone that the spin is real and classical.
So can something that is not quite classical spin classically. Well actually we have a number of common things you will be familar with that will help.

First lets consider a tornado or water eddy they spin and they are not solid and real but are spins of the medium they are in. Now they require a medium or ether and we have concluded that spacetime has none so they are interesting but not useful.

Next lets consider the swirling magnetic field in an induction motor



So now we have a spinning field across an area of spacetime and spacetime itself isn't spinning so we are getting closer. If you place something magnetic inside the swirling magnetic field in an induction motor it will follow it around so our thing that isn't at all solid or real called a field can be measured and has effects in our classic world even though what exactly the swirling field is remains a bit puzzling.

Bill S the above may help you with your thinking about whether a field is inside or outside spacetime but I am going to leave that up to you to work through

Hopefully by now we have got you to realise that non classical things can indeed give rise to classical measurements and that is where confusion starts.

If you try and make the electron solid and real and spin it around like a solid earth model your calculations go crazy because the elctron is not classical in it's nature at all but it's spin is measurable in a classic way.

Now lets bring in our negative temperature below absolute zero and tie it all together.

The problem with temperature is it a classical measurement and that measurement started off historically by a column of liquid expanded inside a glass tube, I am sure we all know what a thermometer is.

The problem is it is not a singular measurement of a singular property although classic physics assigned it to the concept of the vibration momentum of matter it is a simplification that is not actually real. Under quantum mechanics temperature is simply a statistic made up of mathematics of momentum and a number of quantum spins.

Conceptually it easy to show what happens and why classic physics gets it so wrong, I will introduce couples world.

Imagine you live in couples world where you may only enter where you are a male and female couple and in general male and female couples always move around together lovingly holding hands.

If you were an observer measuring in couples world you would make an interesting observation that no matter where you measure in couples world one always finds on average one testicle and one developed breast per person in couples world.
As our couples move around that statistic would be born out to be true and you may even conceed it is a classic measurement in couples world.

There is however a problem even in couples world when our couple go to the toilet they seperate and our scientists happens to take up camp outside the male toilet. What he notices is a violation of couple land law there are almost no developed breasts entering the male toilet so he would call it negative breast. Similarly he goes over to the female toilet and he notices he has negative testicles.

What they are doing in the negative temperature work is playing with quantum mechanics to do something weird in a classical sense. The actual physical real spacetime can not have a negative temperature it is forbidden because it is a bound state construct we know that because thats how we derived the concept of temperature and discovered it in the first place. It is vitual you realize that spacetime itself COULD NEVER have a negative temperature it is truely a couples world.

What they are really showing off is that fact and they created the cubicles for the toilets via QM to seperate our couples in couples world and measure negative temperature. The negative temperature can only exist in there QM toilet cubicles they created and can never exist in couples world

So it's a cool experiment in the sense that it yet again underlines QM is correctly predicting weird things that classic physics would never realise and it may be experimentally useful to probe quantum effects but it has no real relevance to our real world and our real world can never go below absolute zero.

That will do for now lets see how you go.