How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass

Ultimately this happens due to the non-zero vacuum state of the Higgs field. That little bit of Higgsiness everywhere refuses to cancel out in the Lagrangian, giving us our

mass

term. This was all a simplified explanation. I know it's horrible, right? By imposing full U(1)xSU(2) electroweak invariance at the true Higgs potential, we obtain three Goldstone bosons that are swallowed by 3 of the 4 electroweak gauge bosons. These gain

mass

and become the two W and one Z bosons of the weak interaction. The fourth boson manages to escape unscathed and massless, becoming the photon we know and love. It is freed from its heavier cousins, the independent mediator of a part of the former electroweak field (what we now experience as electromagnetism), while W and Z trudge through the muck of their coupling with the Higgs field.

Their mass shortened their lifespan and thus greatly reduced their range, weakening the force they mediate. So that's where we are today. This is the Higgs

mechanism

. The Higgs field also

give

s mass to particles of matter (fermions), but that is for another time. But what about this new measurement of the mass of the W boson? Mass results from the interaction with the Higgs field, but also from all the other subtle interactions that a particle can undergo. The predicted mass of the W boson takes into account all Standard Model particles that could have a ghostly presence as virtual particles in the boson's energy field.

The fact that FermiLab measured a larger mass than expected suggests that there is an unknown particle or particles flickering around the W boson. The discovery of the Higgs boson 10 years ago verified the idea that nature's underlying symmetries explain and unify some of the forces of nature. Perhaps new particles will lead us to new clues about even deeper unifying symmetries of space-time. Hello everyone. Comments will be back next week, but before we go I wanted to thank everyone who took our episode idea survey. If you haven't already, there's still time. It's just a short 8-question survey that you can use to share your ideas for episodes, tell us what topics you'd like us to explore, and generally tell us a little about yourself and what you'd like to see happen in the Space-Time Universe.  There is a link in the description.