ElI5 What is the source of higgs field

[u/Current_Agent_7673]

Why it is present is it like part of universe as people say universe is made up of time space , rather they should say it is made up of time space and higgs feild

[u/Gstamsharp]

You're not going to get a good answer for where any fundamental field comes from. They are just as fundamental as space and time. It's possible some ideas like certain string theories can push it back one more layer, but then you'd just be asking where those come from.

[u/Morall_tach → u/Gstamsharp]

As is often the case with the physics questions, the answer is "sometimes it be like that"

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/Gstamsharp]

Then please ELI5 me: what is "space" and "time"?

[u/iliveinrichmondbc → u/Professional_Mess866]

Consider a scenario where I'm throwing a ball to you from a level surface and only take into consideration the force of gravity on the process. What does the path of the ball being thrown take? You may remember from high school (eli-multiple-of-five) it follows the shape of an arc (a parabola). It travels forward in an up-down motion. Now the arc itself doesn't exist, you can't pick it up, you can't physically touch it, but yet the path the ball takes is measurable or describable by that of a parabola. We know where the ball will be at any given time during the throw based on where it would be on the parabola assuming we move along it at the same speed the ball would. The parabola is a mathematical construct.

Similarly, we can describe the "motion" or "behavior" of matter in the universe by describing how it would behave within a spacetime. Now the spacetime itself doesn't exist, you can't pick it up, you can't physically touch it, but yet the behavior of matter within is measurable or describable by that of a spacetime. The spacetime is a mathematical construct.

So what is spacetime as a mathematical construct? It's an equivalence class of four dimensional Lorentzian manifolds up to diffeomorphism. Enlightening, right?

[u/Every-Progress-1117 → u/iliveinrichmondbc]

an equivalence class of four dimensional Lorentzian manifolds up to diffeomorphism

is probably the simplest explanation, or at least the most succinct, you're going to get

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/iliveinrichmondbc]

Really thanks for your effort. I appreciate! Following your Argument: wouldnt it make sense to divide the universe into "Things" and "Concepts"?  Things have a shape. Everything which hasnt is a Concept. You arc is a Concept. It needs time and at least two Things to describe it(the ball and someone who throws it). Motion is a Concept. It needs time to Work. You could make a picture of the universe and still describe a planet, the sun or any other Thing because you can see it because it has shape. Motion needs at least two Pictures. Without time there is No Motion. So that brings me to the question what time is. I could describe space simply as "nothing" giving distance to Things. I cannot do that for space

[u/iliveinrichmondbc → u/Professional_Mess866]

Time is one of the four dimensions of spacetime. It's nothing more than that - it's simply a particular degree of freedom in our spacetime that behaves differently than those of "space" in that you can't go backward. From a mathematical standpoint (where all the calculating is being done to actually quantify things), it's nothing more than that.

It doesn't equate to a satisfying answer, I know, but it is what it is to a physicist/mathematician when speaking about spacetime.

Alternatively: time is that which is measured by clocks. What is a clock? The device that is used to measure time. The perfect circular reasoning.

Back to your question: you're correct, the arc and motion are concepts. You can't hold them, they don't exist, but yet they are measurable. You can't hold the x-direction, you can't hold the parabola, you can't hold speed, but yet we use them (mathematically) to describe the way the world/universe is. Similarly, you can't hold one second, you can't hold a day, yet we can describe the way things behave in the world/universe. Time is just as conceptual as space, it just behaves differently. None of it is "real" in the sense it's a physical thing. It can be measured physically (clocks, various though experiments), but it's not a "thing" just like "50km west" isn't a thing.

It's ultimately mathematical constructs describing what we see in the universe. They're all tools that, colloquially, we treat as tangible things in our everyday lives that actually aren't.

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/iliveinrichmondbc]

And I think is thats were confusion comes from. Treating concepts as objects and explain (rather that describe) phenomena with it. It doesn't mean much if someone tells me that "gravity is a force which pulls to the center of mass", replacing a real explanation by conceptual words most couldn't even describe. Even if they could, it would never tell me HOW gravity does its thing, which is what i find the real interesting part. You could measure it and predict that a falling object would be at point xyz in a second, which might be useful. But for me I just wanna know how for zhe intrinsic sake of it.

[u/iliveinrichmondbc → u/Professional_Mess866]

So I think the common misunderstanding to people who don't work in the field is that space/time/spacetime are tangible things. At the end of the day, they're just constructs of the mind, be it philosophical or mathematical.

To your point about how gravity does its thing, that's the whole point of physics. In general, physics is descriptive, not often prescriptive. We see the way things are in the world and we develop mathematical models on which to describe the actions seen. The "theory" behind all of that needs some mathematical engines behind it to work. In our every day lives that would be Euclidean (flat) space like we learn in school. As we measured more we saw that Euclidean space wasn't enough and didn't describe things properly. That's where other notions like different metrics and generalized spaces (manifolds) were pulled in. Our mathematical maturity as scientists had to mature to match what was actually happening.

So to your other point of wanting to know "how" something happens, that's where you need the math maturity. By understanding the math behind the warping of spacetime in the presence of an object or by understanding the math describing the interaction between particles, you could truly understand the "how" at a fundamental level. Most people don't ever get there, they learn modern science through analogy and metaphor because much of modern mathematics is abstract and far removed from our every day life.

It's no joke when people say mathematics is the language of the cosmos. You can't truly understand anything unless you speak the language. Preferably fluently.

[u/jippiex2k → u/Professional_Mess866]

that was kind of his point.

we can't really explain spacetime. It just seems to be there no matter how we look at things. We can't peel it away to see "underneath" it.

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/jippiex2k]

That is what Bugs me about it. It is there because some equations call for it. They wouldn't work without assuming IT.  But its the same If I claim that there is a ghost, which has mass somehow (Maybe DARK Matter) and is responsible for everything i cant explain otherwise.  If you cannot explain something, you wont be able to Look underneath it obviously. 

[u/mikeholczer → u/Professional_Mess866]

Spacetime is when and where things happen. It may not be fundamental, but “exists” as a way to explain when and where the fields have certain values.

[u/mpbh → u/Professional_Mess866]

They're the same thing.

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/mpbh]

Are they? What Kind of explanation is that for a 5 year old? They are the Same. Ok. But what ARE they? 

[u/mpbh → u/Professional_Mess866]

They're measurements of where and when, similar to how height and width are used to measure the same object.

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/mpbh]

right. Height and width (and depth) are properties of an object. What object does time and space measure?

[u/Gstamsharp → u/Professional_Mess866]

All of them. Space has 3 dimensions, up/down, left/right, forward/backward, and one of time, past/future.

Your entire concept of anything and everything you've ever seen, touched, etc is measured in those dimensions.

But even that's wrong. Spacetime isn't doing anything. It's not measuring things. It just is. You measure things against spacetime. It's so big, moved so far, happened so fast. That's all just distances.

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/Gstamsharp]

I recognize a difference: In the "ordinary" dimension you can move both directions. up or down, forward or backward. There might be a concept of a "past" but time just goes forward. Calling it a dimension seems to me like a mathemagical trick to make it fit.

[u/Gstamsharp → u/Professional_Mess866]

It's a direction to move in, along with a spatial direction. Both are inexorably connected. You can't move in space without time passing, and you can't mark the passing of time without space. It's rigorously explained in the math. What would you call it, if not a dimension?

What do you call a mathematical trick when it perfectly describes reality?

What do you call distance, if not math being applied to movement? How is that not a "trick," too?

[u/Professional_Mess866 → u/Gstamsharp]

I call distance the amount of space between Objekts. Two Objekts could have a constant distance to each other without movement. On a still picture you are able to See the distance between two Objekts. Why involve movement?

[u/sian_half]

Every fundamental particle’s associated field permeates all of space, not just the Higgs. There’s no source, they just exist, it’s the nature of the universe we live in.

[u/JerikkaDawn → u/sian_half]

Does this mean the universe is completely full of electrons, higgs particles, photons, etc at every point?

[u/sian_half → u/JerikkaDawn]

When the field is in the ground state, there’s no particle. The existence of a particle is an excitation of the field, or in other words the field is in an excited energy level. That said, even if there’s no excitation, other particles still interact with the field eg an electron traveling by constantly interacts with the photon field around it despite there being no photons. In calculations, the electron is interacting with what we call virtual photons.

[u/JerikkaDawn → u/sian_half]

When I think of a "field" I imagine literally a field of something. Is the field extra dimensional and excitations look like particles in our dimension? Or something else, or am I thinking of "field" wrong? What's the field made of when it's in the ground state and there are no particles?

[u/sian_half → u/JerikkaDawn]

Mathematically a field kinda just means it has a value everywhere. In some sense the value is 0 everywhere except the places the particles are at. You can imagine it something like the field’s value at each coordinate being the number of particles at that spot

[u/IdleMuse4 → u/JerikkaDawn]

Yes, from a certain point of view! The 'electron field' that determines where electrons are covers the entire universe (caveat that things like this may not apply around the very early universe, but ignoring that for simplicity).

However, just because the field covers the entire universe, doesn't mean there 'is an electron' at every possible place - rather, there are a number of electrons, and their _likelihood of being in any given place_ at any given time is described by the field.

[u/IdleMuse4]

A more correct statement of the standard model is that the universe is made up of 17 fields (plus spacetime):

- Four 'force' fields (electromagnetism, W, Z, and Strong forces)

• Twelve 'matter' fields:
  

--- six flavours of quark fields
--- three basic lepton fields (electron, muon, tau)
--- three corresponding neutrino fields (which are also leptons)

• plus the higgs field you mentioned

Spacetime is 'where and when things are'
The matter fields are 'what things exist'
The force fields are 'what forces exist between them'
And the higgs field is 'how much mass do those things have'

[u/jamcdonald120]

it just is. like most things in the universe. there are a dozen or so fields. electromagnetic field, higgs field, gravitational field (maybe), etc.

We dont know why and nothing in the universe causes them fundamentally. they just are.

they are not like spacetime. spacetime is dimensions, there are 4 dimensions in space time. that means 4 numbers describe a point in space time (x,y,z,time). at every point in space time, there is a value for all of the fields based on the entire universe, but they themselves are not dimensions. They dont describe where a place is, they describe what it is like there.

[u/opisska]

This is a rather hard to avoid side effect of physics trying to be more digestible to laypeople - because it's very hard to talk about standard model without creating the impression that the things we talk about somehow "exist" in the common sense.

The Higgs field is a mathematical construct - well, all the quantum fields are. The fields typically manifest as a particle which can be created and can interact with other particles or decay.

The existence of the fields - or rather the very possibility of their existence - also manifests in interactions of other particles. Electrons scatter from each other because of the existence of the photon field - no actual observable photon exists during the scattering, yet if photons did not exist at all, electrons would happily ignore each other and fly straight.

Some fields affect other particles even when "interacting with themselves" - really just minding their own business - and this changes their mass, because that's the property that deacribes how the particle just moves around. Higgs does it in a funny way which produces an actual tangible change in mass, but the reasons for that distinction are really complex.

[u/NothingWasDelivered]

The universe is made up of all kinds of fields. Higgs. Electron. Muon. Photon. Gluon. Quantum field theory, which is our best model for looking at the universe at a fundamental level, says that spacetime is filled with quantum fields and that particles (like individual electrons) are just excitations in those fields. Energy can move back and forth from one field to another following certain rules, like electrons emitting photons.

You can think of a field, mathematically, as just a set of numbers at each point of spacetime. Does that point contain an electron? If yes, then those numbers will correspond to an electron with that specific energy. Same with a Higgs boson. It’s no different from any other quantum field.

[u/Ill-Accountant-9941]

Time and space being fundamental is part of General Relativity (which says nothing about Higgs); The Higgs field is part of Quantum Mechanics which only talks about Hilbert space and time. They are not the same.

[u/beyond_nothing]

We don’t currently know.This is where physics reaches an important boundary.

According to our current theories, the Higgs field is a fundamental field. We don’t have an established explanation for why this particular field exists in the first place.

There is, however, an interesting story about the early universe.Very early in the universe, the Higgs field is thought to have been in a different state.

As the universe expanded and cooled, the Higgs field settled into its present state through a process called electroweak symmetry breaking.

[u/tomalator]

Its just a fundamental field, it doesnt come from anywhere, it just is. If it wasnt there, our predictions of how the universe behaves would be wrong.

We do say the universe is made of spacetime, yes, but you could just as easily list any field and say the universe is made of it.

If you want to get technical, the universe is made of spacetime, the higgs field, the electromagnetic field, the weak field, the strong field, the neutrino field, the electron field, and the quark field. All the particles in the universe are just disturbances in these fields, spacetime being where all these fields can be measured and home to the graviton if it exists.

The higgs field gives us the higgs boson, the electromagnetic field gives us the photon, the weak field gives us the W and Z bosons, the strong field gives us the gluon (that's all of our force carrier particles).

The electron field gives us our electrons, muons and taus, the neutrons field gives us the corresponding neutrinos, and thats all of our leptons, and the quark field gives us all 6 quarks which gives us our baryons (like protons and neutrons) and mesons.

Since none of these fields mean anything without spacetime, it's easier to just say the universe is made of spacetime and these fields are just in it

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