Invariance, Covariance, Unity, and Duality

You misunderstand. The Higgs field, unlike the photon field or the electron field, has non-zero expectation value and it is this non-zero expectation value, not the Higgs boson, that gives fundamental particles mass in the Higgs mechanism. Thus the theory that the Higgs field couples to the other quantum fields proportional to their masses is evidenced by the excitation of the field, the Higgs boson, decaying exactly as the Higgs mechanism says which further suggests that the quantum fields of the standard model well-model the behavior of the physics we observe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#A_non-technical_summary

 

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An excellent summary, rpenner. You do get it.

From your referenced article:

"Some years after the original theory was articulated scientists realised that the same field would also explain, in a different way, why other fundamental constituents of matter (including electrons and quarks) have (inertial) mass."

This (giving inertial mass to electrons and quarks) is a "low energy" application of the Higgs field for smaller masses. Much higher energies are possible in the case of larger planets and stars, because the energies are cumulative.

Of course the Higgs field explains why all bound energy (electrons, quarks, and even neutrinos) have inertial mass. It also interacts with (bends the paths of) photons in the vicinity of gravitating bodies the same as it would with passing matter by causing time dilation that imparts rotational inertia from bound energy in the gravitating body to the Higgs field.

Inertia cannot be imparted to something without transferring some inertia back to whatever imparted it. Since Newton's third law. This is particularly true of the Higgs mechanism, since there is a large disparity between involved inertial masses in atomic structure. All bound energy in any inertial reference frame contains both rotational (invariant rest mass) and (kinematic) inertia. The Higgs field alone isn't responsible for gravitation. It requires energy (rotational rest mass or "spin") from atomic structure it imparts inertia to. A graviton that does not impart inertia the way Higgs does isn't even a candidate for what the Higgs field can do. Quantum gravity does not even consider imparting any spin from matter back to gravitons, does it? If a graviton does not impart inertial mass, it is not even eligible to impart gravitational mass, because these must be balanced. A graviton is fiction with supporting math, fabricated only to satisfy gauge boson's symmetry. Like SUSY, this science and the supporting math is DOA since July 4, 2012.

The principle of equivalence assures that whatever inertial mass is transferred from the Higgs field cannot fail to be equal to and balanced with the motion of any other bound or unbound energy in proximity to gravitating masses. Even when a body comes to rest on the surface of a gravitating body, the equivalent acceleration is there, and with it, interaction with the Higgs field as though it were still moving through 'space', which is really just light travel time.

 

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You don't seem to have enough knowledge to make such claims, because the physical theories you claim to be summarizing do not support your claims.
Most of the mass of a planet comes from QCD which makes protons much heavier than the Higgs-derived asymptotically free masses of the bare quarks as seen in high energy physics.
But the Higgs field itself doesn't change due to planetary masses — it has the same non-zero expectation value at the Earth's core and in deep space.

In short, as long as you make incorrect claims about facts and rely on naked assertions and non sequiturs, you aren't showing evidence of having a reasoned position, let alone a position considered to be a philosophy.

 

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E=mc^2 means that "Most of the mass of a planet comes from QCD" QUARKS AND GLUONS AND COLOR EXCHANGES. Yes and NO. Hello. Are you even paying attention to what you are saying? What exactly do you think quarks and gluons and color exchanges are? Energy. Mass. Same thing, as in same thing. You seem to be under the impression that E=mc^2 doesn't mean what it does. Here is the sticky philosophical duality you seem to miss, and for reasons given in the OP.

What a philosopher Gell-man was. He was good at gaming Feynman and the system. A physicist, he wasn't. George Zwieig was the real deal, at least. Oh, sure you can calculate the mass AND the spins of protons from FIRST PRINCIPLES. It only takes two weeks of super computer time and about 20 fudge factors, and when you are finished, YOU ARE OFF BY ABOUT 2%. Fraud. Even Irwin Corey knew how to baffle them with BS. Gell-Mann just did it on a higher level. Quarks and Jaguars, Murray? Really? Bet he drove a Jaguar. Murray's "notational simplifications", the exact opposite strategy of a Feynman diagram, made my hair stand end wise. It obfuscates the true meaning of the mystic math, you see? Con artists love it when whatever they say is not understood. And you can easily do this with the language that is math. Gell-Mam demonstrated how it is possible to put ambiguity back into a language originally crafted to keep it out. Or maybe the missing 2% of calculated proton mass means something else.

All it takes for any energy to have inertial mass is for it to be confined to the same relative approximate location. Quarks and gluons and color exchanges within atomic structure are a case in point. I don't care if it gets its mass from the Higgs field or not. It's energy. It's in the same approximate location isn't it? Do you understand, that is exactly what gravitation makes happen? It doesn't matter that just a few particles get their inertial masses from Higgs. If all of the energy is confined to the same approximate location, it is ALL bound. If it were not, what would happen?

E=mc^2 is the foundational physics of the LHC. As much as it was for the 20th century and the atomic age. I'm talking Einstein, not Democritus.

If the symbolic math that is just another tool of a finite mind can't cipher that, go back and read what Einstein's friend Kurt Godel had to say about the situation. It will eventually come to you.

Can't fathom the possibility that lower energy interactions can effectively confine higher energy interactions? Think OUTSIDE of the box that is described by atomic structure. E=mc^2 works there too. It may prove to be the only math that actually does.

 

No one needs to sell me on the efficacy of analysis by means of Lagrangian dynamics. I know what they can do. On the final exam of my theoretical dynamics class, I derived the equations of motion of a spinning top. The natural frequency of oscillation of both precession and nutation simply drop out of the math so that you can predict the motion of the thing in extraordinary detail.

We never covered either Hamiltonian dynamics nor Noether's theorem, but I'm very certain they are also both powerful mathematical tools for doing physics. I trust them and their results. They are fantastic tools. I received something of value for the tuition I paid so that I could learn them.

But I have no trust whatsoever in string theory or any theory or result that is derived from it, mainly because such results are not subject to scrutiny by experimental means. As far as I am concerned, this removes the essential element of observation (and falsification) of the scientific method from a theory. Just as mathematics requires methods to check the veracity of its results, falsification is no less a prerequisite of mathematically based theories than it is anything else. Creatures with finite minds can never know the whole truth about anything, and the only reason there is ANY survival value in anything we teach our children is because even though we may not know the whole truth, we know a lie when we see one. There are tests for whether or not something is a lie. EXCEPT, it seems, when lies are involved in matters of education. The only palpable test of educational or academic efficacy that means anything to a board of regents is whether or not enough students are gullible enough to believe there is value in the curriculum that is being taught, and whether or not they will pay tuition in order to study it. Notice, this is an idea that is rather sharply at odds with the idea that what students are being taught is the truth, or will be of any use in their future careers in academics or elsewhere.

Rpenner is not the first one I have argued the above points with, but his answer was remarkably similar to the first responses I got in a forum discussion along the same lines of the physicsstackexchange. Someone (or most likely, many universities) are teaching a variety of mathematical physics so divorced from bindings to physical reality that students who study it no longer recognize even simple bindings to reality that are required of their occupations. The LHC literally cannot do an experiment that is not governed by the reality of E=mc^2, yet the students of theoretical physics, particularly ones most deeply steeped in the methods of string theory, QFT and QCD, can't seem to see past the ends of their collective noses. They have forgotten what a "free parameter" really is. It is a fudge factor. It is something fabricated by a mathematician as a constant needed to make the math work. Whereever you see ONE of those, it means that you are using an unknown parameter to make the ends a a theory the same length. The holes in such theoretical frameworks has already been described by Kurt Gödel. They are there because something about a mathematical theory is either incomplete or inconsistent or both.

In Newton's theory, the constant G is a fudge factor. He needed something there so that he could derive the acceleration due to gravity on the surface of the Earth. He had not a clue where it came from or what caused it. Such is the case with any fudge factor or free parameter. Whenever and wherever you use such a device, you do not possess a compete understanding of what it is you are modeling. If you truly believe that you do, you are only lying to yourself.

I blame the philosophy of education. John Dewey sucked. He believed basically in teaching anything and everything he could find textbooks for. Academics suck. If you want a better philosophy of education, study the ideas of Dewey's arch nemesis Bertrand Russell. Worship of Dewey as an educational visionary is the main reason, I will never pay to go back to school to learn anything from anyone who shares Dewey's educational philosophy. Unfortunately, this cuts out a large swath of the educational system in the country in which I reside.

Teach the truth, or if you can't do that, teach only what you actually know. Life is too short to teach your children lies. Their lives will be even shorter if they believe the lies or if they need to take precious time out of their own short lives in order to unravel or correct them. I hope I have helped a few people here to put whatever it is they have been taught into the proper perspective.

 

This isn't true.

Even finite minds can evolve to become infinite. It's just a matter of time.

Truth is that which has no flaw. Dark is absence of light. Light is truth and cannot be contradicted unless by lying. By contrasting lie with truth we arrive at truth. Creativity and invention could not advance without the mind's ability to investigate the truth.

 

The whole truth about even the smallest thing won't fit in a finite mind, but nice job working the falsification paradigm.

One of the most limiting factors of mathematics is the use of symbols. You could literally read everything ever written about the subject of apples (just the fruit) in every human language you could eventually understand for a lifetime, but unless you left the library to go out and get an apple, or someone gave you a sample of the real thing to actually taste, you would not really ever know what an apple was. Even after you tasted one, how many variations are there on this theme? Think you know them all? You don't. Furthermore, you can't.

One dynamic of how incomplete mathematics is in this respect has to do with the nature of truth itself. THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES IN NATURE. NONE, as in NOT A SINGLE ONE. Even on a level of quantum identity, nothing that is not entangled with its counterpart is absolutely identical, and even if they are for an instant, they don't remain that way. We now understand that even nothing is something that is not physically an absolute, although it may prove to be entangled. How long that may last varies at every point, differentiated by the different rates at which time itself proceeds everywhere. But I'm no expert, even about something so seemingly insignificant as nothing.

Truth, even in mathematics, is not an absolute. It is only a value. How many combinations of those are there? More than will fit in the narrow crevice between your ears.

 

Thank you for making me reconsider my position danshawen. Only one disagreement, mathematics is absolute truth unless it can be defeated and left for dead. Are you saying it cannot be due to it being a creation of the finite human universe?

 

Here is an interesting article that supports your argument danshawen: http://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw...nd-philosophers-debate-the-scientific-method/

 

Not at all. Mathematics is dead useful, and in many cases, it is the only language that gets us as close to the truth as possible. However it is possible to tell a lie, even in mathematics, and without even trying very hard to do so. The easiest way to lie in math is to ignore a single observable fact necessary to a model and simply pretend it has no bearing on the problem at hand. Language of any kind is just as flawed as we are in the way we use or abuse it. Let he who has never made a single mathematical mistake his entire mathematical career refute this reality.

 

I disagree with Gross (and also Witten) that String Theory is without better alternatives. There have ALWAYS been better alternatives.

Independent derivation of certain aspects of reality are not derivable from first mathematical principles without reference or bindings to physical reality. String theory says that it is possible. Almost without expending any effort, I can prove that it isn't, starting with plane geometry and proceeding from there. Witten kicked off string theory by defining the topology of the sigma field. Wrong approach from its very inception.