A Crunching Multiverse To Solve Two Fundamental Physics Puzzles at Once:
A duo of theorists proposes a new theory to explain both the surprisingly small mass of the Higgs boson and the puzzling symmetry properties of the strong force.
The discovery of the Higgs boson was a landmark in the history of physics. It explained something fundamental: how elementary particles that have mass get their masses. But it also marked something no less fundamental: the beginning of an era of measuring in detail the particle's properties and finding out what they might reveal about the nature of the universe.
One such property is the particle's mass, which at 125 GeV is surprisingly small. Many theories have been put forward to explain this small mass, but none has so far been confirmed with data. In a paper just published in Physical Review Letters, Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Daniele Teresi of CERN propose a new theory to explain both the lightness of the Higgs boson and another fundamental physics puzzle.
In broad brushes, the duo's theory works like this. In its early moments, the universe is a collection of many universes each with a different value of the Higgs mass, and in some of these universes the Higgs boson is light. In this multiverse model, universes with a heavy Higgs boson collapse in a big crunch in a very short time, whereas universes with a light Higgs boson survive this collapse. Our present-day universe would be one of these surviving light-Higgs universes.
What's more, the model, which includes two new particles in addition to the known particles predicted by the Standard Model, can also explain the puzzling symmetry properties of the strong force, which binds quarks together into protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons into atomic nuclei.
Although the theory of the strong force, known as quantum chromodynamics, predicts a possible breakdown in strong interactions of a fundamental symmetry called CP symmetry, such a breakdown is not observed in experiments. One of the new particles in D'Agnolo and Teresi's model can solve this so-called strong CP problem, making strong interactions CP symmetric. Moreover, the same new particle could also account for the dark matter that is thought to make up most of the matter in the universe.
Journal Reference:
Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo, Daniele Teresi. Sliding Naturalness: New Solution to the Strong-$CP$ and Electroweak-Hierarchy Problems [open], Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.021803)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @01:07AM (2 children)
It's the goddamned particle, as in we can't find the goddamned thing but we know it has to be there. So we found the goddamned thing. Huzzah.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:22PM (1 child)
Whoever moderated that AC "troll" is ignorant. The AC simply attempted unsuccessfully to explain where the name "God particle" came from.
A dimwitted reporter was interviewing a particle physicist who was searching for the Higgs before it was found and named. The reporter asked him what they called the particle, and he replied "the God damned particle"; it had frustrated physicists for years.
But you can't print "God damned" in the newspaper, so the idiot reporter simply dropped the "damn".
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30 2022, @03:37AM
The physicist was Leon Lederman, and it was the title of his popular book. He said that the publisher went with that name over his objection.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday January 29 2022, @02:29AM (1 child)
So the universe is the way it is because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to ponder it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 29 2022, @06:46AM
That's the anthropic principle. And already a quite old idea (as is the idea of multiverses).
The new thing, if I understand it correctly, is that this theory also puts the Higgs mass to the list of things to be explained that way.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @02:31AM
"...universes with a light Higgs boson survive this collapse"
You can also play with the inverse Fine Structure Constant?
Change anything there and see what happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @04:20AM (3 children)
It will happen sooner or later, if not already.
Either that or the locusts mentioned in The Bible.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:54AM (2 children)
I think the locusts mentioned in the Bible are dead by now and you don't need to worry about them so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:46PM
Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces
- Revelation 9:3-10
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday January 31 2022, @10:40PM
Different locusts, maybe? There was a major locust pestilence in Africa last year.
(Score: 3, Funny) by EJ on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:02AM (2 children)
God said, “Let there be light...Higgs boson,” and there was light...Higgs boson.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 29 2022, @05:27PM (1 child)
That pun didn't even cause a groan, but I don't know what downmod to attach to a failed joke.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Sunday January 30 2022, @01:38AM
I'll mod it Funny, then you mod it Overrated
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday January 29 2022, @07:49AM
the metaverse was created, bringing the nonsense full circle.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Saturday January 29 2022, @10:07AM (2 children)
That's a quotation from elsewhere.
But an issue with the current state of 'theories of everything' is that there are too many parameters. Physicists like to reduce everything to the simplest possible terms, so having to tweak certain numbers for no apparent reason to just the right value to make the universe work offends their sensibilities.
This is why anything that holds the promise of explaining relationships between fundamental forces, particles and geometries without needing a manual tweak is welcomed.
The anthropic principle is a way of giving up: the Universe just is and other models were not viable.
One way of handwaving this is by talking about the evolution of a possibly infinite set of universes, which explore parameter space, and we happen to live in one of the more long-lived ones. So the Big Bang becomes not just the coming into being of our Universe, but possibly the coming into being of a possibly infinite number of other universes (the multiverse), or you can take a steady-state model and posit that universes are coming into being all the time, and we just happen to live in one where a random assemblage of fundamental parameters happens to 'work'.
From my point of view, I don't really care if our Universe is constrained to be unique by a viable theory of everything, or is just a random blip in the roiling 'foam' of random Universe creation, but it's still interesting to try and find out which it is.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Saturday January 29 2022, @06:31PM (1 child)
That's probably from Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus cars. His constant design directive, beginning when he was the only designer, was lightness and simplicity. Back when Lotus was a significant part of Formula 1 racing, his cars were well-known for being "spare", with nothing that wasn't absolutely needed and as little of those as necessary. Of course, during testing, and racing, sometimes things were too light and failed, but without CAD tools, engineers relied on experience. He may have been onto something as some World Constructors Championship titles shows.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday January 30 2022, @03:42PM
Yup. Bang on the nose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @02:13PM (1 child)
I'm not entirely clear if they're saying that the universe contained regions with different masses of the Higgs particle, or if there are supposed to be a bunch of disconnected universes each with their own Higgs particle.
If it's the first, and the other regions all collapsed with Big Crunches... then where did they go? I guess the idea is that the regions are so big that, even with inflation, they don't affect each other? Because we would definitely notice a whopping huge Universe-mass singularity.
If it's the second, then it's just multiverse fluff. The multiverse is pseudoscience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @07:59PM
But based on reading followup comments seems to be refuted:
The Higgs Boson is the Highlander(Or Jet Li's The One) of particles: There can be only one. Early Higgs Boson universes imploded, whether due to a greater mass, or because the parameters that made them were untenable (if this was a computer program or a quantum computer program I am sure you could make some sort of 'parameter coalescence' point. Essentially as less choices for the future happen in the multiverse the higgs boson gets heavier, speeding up the implosion of all remaining universes until there is only one, at which time, persumably it either stabilizes or implodes itself.
Now this theory seems to not be what the article was talking about, given other replies content, but perhaps it is a theory worth following up on, by for example re-weighing the higgs-boson X number of years into the future. The difference in measurement may not be discernable due to variations in equipment available then or not, or variations due to have the universe actually reacts to changes in fundamental particles, but if this theory is correct, and if the example given above is possible, then the 'weight' of the Higgs Boson should be increasing subtly however often parallel universes are collapsing (which might be anywhere from every second to every eon, but should eventually show up in testing if we make sure to sample periodically and not simply assume this value is a fundamental principle of the universe, but rather is changing due to events outside of our three to four dimensional sense of perception.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 29 2022, @11:57PM
isn't the higgs just the cartoonish *woosh*-cloud that follows when we electrically accelerate unhappy charged particles brutally?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30 2022, @03:03AM
Lame link to "science made simple" for the Higgs Boson explainer. That explains almost nothing. It lists some research and funding groups, and names names. Fine. I don't care. Those data tell us NOTHING about the Higgs Boson. Oh, it "gives mass" to everything the article says. All right. Then a few paragraphs later "it gives mass to protons - but not most of the proton's mass!"
"Science" for managers, written by a bad communicator.