Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleAl  1) The Standard Model arrives massless.
2) Mass empirically exists.
3) The Higgs mechansim rationalizes the existence of mass without performing prediction. About 15 fundamental masses must be inserted by hand into the Standard Model.
There is no reason for the Higgs boson to exist other than theoretical convenience. Uncle Al predicts the LHC will not discover the Higgs. How much fun would that be? |
While I agree that things could be less simple than the model (as currently conceived), I point out that there's a smite more than "theoretical convenience" behind the idea of Goldstone bosons and the Higgs mechanism; it isn't just an artifice to explain masses. Symmetry breaking is very fundamental to the entire model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleAl Lots! Look at the seven fundamental SI quantities. All of them except mass has a fundamental quantum mechanical fiduciary standard. The standard kilogram is an arbitrary lump of Pt-10% Ir alloy in Sèvres, France (that measurably drifts in value over time - as do all its secondary standard copies, each one differently). Perhaps physics has made a terrible error in its modeling of mass. |
There's a substantial difference between talking about mass and about
the unit of mass. It is definitely sloppy to still have such a crude definition for the unit but this is totally irrelevant to the matter here. Anyways, last year I tried suggesting something better to the SI folk and later discovered they had already been thinking along similar lines. There's really no point inferring that something must be wrong with the standard model or the Higgs mechanism on the basis of how units are currently defined.
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