How will we use the Higgs Field?

[Drunkrobot]

On the 4th of July 2012, the wonderful people manning the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced that they almost definitely found hard evidence of the Higgs Boson predicted by the Standard Model.

Stare long and hard at it, folks, because this is the most important family photo you will ever see.

Finding this "goddamned" particle was so important because it provided experimental backing of the existence of the Higgs Field, the interaction with which being what gives particles mass. Understanding what gives anything this most fundmental of properties is obviously needed to develop a complete understanding of the Universe.

Here's to you, super-science machine.

"But what is the actual, real world benefit of this one little particle?" Says the idiot in the corner.

Wait, actually, that is a good question. While knowing more about how the Universe works is a worthy goal for the human race, we could also use the fruits of our labors to improve the human condition.

Don't think I'm one of those armchair politicians who wants to gut the experimental physics budget and send it straight to curing cancer or whatever. It's simply that recently, in Physics class, conversation turned to it's discovery, and the cost of the project to find it. One boy in the class said "What had we got from it?". My immediate thoughts turned to what area of the body would cause maximum pain if I punched it, as I thought about it, I wondered to myself "In 50, or 100 years time, how will the human race be affected by this newly opened chapter in particle physics?".

When a new area of theoretical physics opens up to study, it appears to the general public, and indeed to many contemporary scientists, as "useless". Then, when the aspects of it is quantified, tested, how it effects the "real world" is brought to the limelight, and the people who pay attention understands how it can make us powerful. Then, often after decades of study, new inventions utilizing it make their appearance, often changing the world. While it can take a human lifetime, several lifetimes even, for the benefits to come about, when they do they come hard and fast.

Maxwell's equations, 1873

Television from the Moon, 99 years later.

Already, the Higgs Field is on it's way to being a part of everyday society. With it discovered, effort know turns to measuring it, pulling out how it works from Natures bosom. The International Linear Collider will build on LHC's legacy of particle-smashing to begin refined study of the Higgs Field and it's Boson.

The next contender in impressive scientific megaprojects that begin with "International".

What I'm asking you is, how do you think humanity in the future will be using the Higgs Field in practical applications, similar to how nowadays we use electromagnetism for radio, and atomic nuclei for fission. No idea is too far fetched, nobody in 1850 would've ever guessed what we have achieved using their work. The Higgs Field gives stuff mass, so whatever we use it for, it's going to be really cool! After all, the next generation will be standing on the shoulders of giants.

[DaveofDefeat]

Anti-mass? Even the ability to reduce mass, Light speed here we come.

[falofonos]

Potentially mass manipulation and or inertia dampening.

Within our lifetimes, probably very little other than refinements of our understanding of the universe which may in turn lead to other interesting applications.

[KvickFlygarn87]

I do say, reducing the mass of stuff would be quite a hoot for spaceflight.

[Scotius]

Finally a way to punch Rocket Equation in the face Also, Alcubierre Drive - for realz

[Lohan2008]

Higg's Boson as it's own particle/field = FTW,

Research is being conducted on harnessing the quantum effects of nanoscale capacitors to create digital quantum batteries. Although this technology is still in the experimental stage, it theoretically has the potential to provide dramatic increases in energy storage capacity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage#Advanced_systems

Edited November 21, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Lohan2008]

Love the idea of an anti-higgs boson; it is bad enough trying to picture a force that makes everything "pop" into existence and then trying to warp your mind around a yet undiscovered force that makes everything loose electromagnetic attraction.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Lohan2008

[K^2]

Anti-mass? Even the ability to reduce mass, Light speed here we come.

Potentially mass manipulation and or inertia dampening.

I do say, reducing the mass of stuff would be quite a hoot for spaceflight.

Where are you guys getting this nonsense? For matter fields, Higgs mechanism provides a tiny amount of current mass. The chiral symmetry is dynamically broken anyways. 99% of mass is due to kinetic energy of quarks and gluons in nuclei.

How will we use the Higgs Field?

How are we using weak and color fields? These are way more accessible than Higgs field, and we are doing nada with these. Heck, our use of gravitational field is rudimentary. The only reason we make good use of electromagnetic field is that it has such strong coupling, infinite range, and the two charges can cancel eachother out. Other fields don't have such nice, convenient properties.

[DaveofDefeat]

Aw k^2 can't you let us dream for a little longer before you crush us with painful reality.

[Scotius]

This guy is no fun

[Camacha]

Well, I hate to say it, but I bet there was a K^2 in 1873 whom was saying not much would change

The beauty of knowledge and technology is that it tends to accelerate. What is mundane for us, is absolutely unbelievable for just a generation earlier. Just a couple of years before my grandmother was born, the first aircraft had barely left the earth and we had only just begun understanding that atoms exist and what their nature is. When my mother was born flying had become a common form of transport routinely done, DNA was being discovered and not much later the world was racing for the moon. Crude ballistical computers were developed to keep the enemy at bay. When I was born, computers many times faster than those huge ballistical devices started to appear in regular people's homes, expensive though they were. Information systems were switched from analog to digital. With the advent of the next generation, a huge near neural network that spans the world has formed, we are smashing protons apart to understand the very fabric of the universe and we carry enormous amounts of calculative power in our pockets to look at cats.

Just looking at the facts there is almost no other possibility than that our world will almost unrecognizably change yet again. Saying anything else is just denying the obvious. The only reason for discarding silly ideas about the future it is that the future will most likely be a lot sillier than what even the most dangerously unstable fantast comes up with today.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Camacha

[Starwaster]

Let's weaponize it...

[3_bit]

Less mass paves the way to the inevitable "no mass" and "anti-mass". I imagine hoverboards would be as far away as finding some revolutionary new means of controlling this field on a small level. Of course, there is a bit over a year before Back to the Future's 2015 is predicted to be at. I'm sure it could still happen if some worldwide revolutionary new system put our economies into overdrive...

[AndrewBCrisp]

K^2 has a point. We're looking at fields that while we can prove they exist, don't have nice, easy ways for us to manipulate. This does not mean we will never learn how to manipulate them, but the gap between theory and practical application may be bigger than we think. No hoverboards by 2015, but maybe if you wait until 2515...

For myself, I'm thinking it's a good thing that that gap is so big, because I'm not sure a blanket mass-reduction mechanism is a good idea. True, we could theoretically use it to make things lighter (though not as much as some people would like, if the Higgs field truly contributes only a tiny portion of mass to matter), but remember such a mechanism would likely affect ALL particles. And if you reduce the mass of particles, you could change their behavior in ways you didn't expect - or like.

For example, what might happen if you reduce the mass of electrons? What's the effect on electron shells of atoms - and on chemical reactions? (Or: what use is a hoverboard if the rider dies because his body chemistry goes haywire the moment he steps on it?)

Or the Z and W bosons? IIRC, those control the weak nuclear force, which governs radioactivity: what happens if you reduce their mass? Will stable isotopes stay stable? Could radioactive isotopes become more active, more dangerous?

Basically, I'd like to know the general failure modes and side-effects of a Higgs-dampening field before we start churning out the antigravity devices of our dreams. And the big theory-to-engineering gap the field presents can let us find that out ahead of time.

[Camacha]

Basically, I'd like to know the general failure modes and side-effects of a Higgs-dampening field before we start churning out the antigravity devices of our dreams. And the big theory-to-engineering gap the field presents can let us find that out ahead of time.

Luckily we have smart scientists, who not only develop an amazing technology, but also check whether it might cause the universe to fall apart upon use. If so > do not sell.

[xxjetterxx]

Infiniglide IRL anyone?

[Gojira]

Infiniglide IRL anyone?

That's supposed to be KSP only, dammit!

But in all seriousness, I have no idea how we could use it given the reasons above.

[Bunsen]

K^2 has a point. We're looking at fields that while we can prove they exist, don't have nice, easy ways for us to manipulate. This does not mean we will never learn how to manipulate them, but the gap between theory and practical application may be bigger than we think. No hoverboards by 2015, but maybe if you wait until 2515...

For myself, I'm thinking it's a good thing that that gap is so big, because I'm not sure a blanket mass-reduction mechanism is a good idea. True, we could theoretically use it to make things lighter...

I'm not sure you caught K^2's actual point. Knowing how the Higgs field works doesn't open up the ability to change particle masses any more than knowing how electrodynamics works allows you to change the charge of an electron, or knowing about W/Z boson couplings lets you turn beta decay on and off.

We've learned to exploit the electromagnetic properties of nature in very important ways, and maybe someday the other fundamental forces will also have technological application (beyond clumsy, tangential uses like nuclear reactions), but physics as we know it contains no indication that you can change how any of those fundamental interactions work.

[Starwaster]

K^2 has a point. We're looking at fields that while we can prove they exist, don't have nice, easy ways for us to manipulate. This does not mean we will never learn how to manipulate them, but the gap between theory and practical application may be bigger than we think. No hoverboards by 2015, but maybe if you wait until 2515...

That's BS, I don't have that long!!! I have to wait until 2515? Where's the complaint department?

[Jim DiGriz]

Okay, lets say that we look at the bigger picture and say that Higgs field is part of a Grand Unified Field Theory. Lets also assume that there are X and Y bosons out there waiting to be found which violate baryon conservation and mediate proton decay. If we could harness a strong enough beam of those, maybe we could learn to catalyze proton decay, liberating a total mass conversion drive for a nuclear photonic rocket. Not quite as sexy as an Alcubierre drive, but nuclear energy currently only liberates about 0.1% of the mass-energy of the fuel, while this would be ideally 100% energy conversion with an Isp of light speed -- but that is with perfect collimation and if some of the energy escapes as neutrinos or other weakly interacting massive particles then there would be inefficiencies. If you look at some of the jets coming from black holes those are radiating energy at something like 60%(?) of the infalling matter, so approaching total conversion is something that does exist in the universe, we just haven't figured out how to harness it yet.

If I was writing a science fiction story, the massive amounts of supersymmetric particles that it sprays out in all directions would radiate as a shockwave of information travelling at light speed through the Universe announcing that we had achieved interstellar travel and detectors on other planets would pick this up, and that's when the warring alien races look our way... As the number of systems that information hits would increase geometrically with time/distance, it would only be a relatively short matter of time before first contact.

The Higgs alone wouldn't get us there, but it'd be a step in that direction...

[ZetaX]

I'm not sure you caught K^2's actual point. Knowing how the Higgs field works doesn't open up the ability to change particle masses any more than knowing how electrodynamics works allows you to change the charge of an electron, or knowing about W/Z boson couplings lets you turn beta decay on and off.

I tend to think that you are missunderstanding him there, as you confuse electrons with an electromagnetic field. To do electronics, you don't need to be able to change any fundamental property of electrons, but only of their distribution. Similiarily, you could achieve a change of mass by redistributing Higgs bosons (apart from this being a horrible oversimplification). Thus compare mass (induced by "presence" of Higgs bosons + relativity) with charge (induced by electrons, etc.).

[vetrox]

As with any form of science. You can never truly tell what the off shoots of scientific research are.

So many things have been discovered by accident. For all we know this "higgs Field" could lead to a new form of uranium enrichment (total randomness).

Proffessor Brian Cox did an extremely interesting documentary on the subject for the BBC. Science Britanicca it was called (its a little patriotic to the brits but theres plenty of fact there)

[nhnifong]

If we can locally strengthen or weaken the weak force by changing effect the higgs boson has on the the mass of the W and Z bosons, then we change the stability of nuclear isotopes. It may be possible to access the hypothesised island of stability around atoms with 300 to 330 protons. Some of these might prove to be powerful and maybe even safer alternatives to nuclear fission power sources. Imagine having a single battery in your pocket that powers your house and your car and everything else you own, and you only need one in your whole lifetime.

[Aghanim]

^ http://www.damninteresting.com/half-science-and-hafnium-bombs/ comes to my mind immediately

[K^2]

^ http://www.damninteresting.com/half-science-and-hafnium-bombs/ comes to my mind immediately

^178m2Hf decay is a strong process. It has nothing to do with weak decay.