In “What is the Higgs boson and why does it matter?” (New Scientist, December 26, 2011) physicist Lawrence Krauss, explains,
If our ideas about the Higgs boson turn out to be correct, then everything we see is a kind of window dressing based on an underlying fabric of reality in which we shouldn’t exist. The particles that make us up – which bind together to form protons, neutrons, nuclei and ultimately atoms – have mass. Without the Higgs, these particles would be massless, like photons.
In this way, the mass of everything is determined by the existence of the field, and mass is an accident of our circumstances because we exist in a universe in which such a background field happens to have arisen.
If a single Higgs and nothing else is discovered at the LHC it will therefore be a mixed blessing – perhaps the worst possibility we theorists can imagine. We will have discovered the origin of mass, as advertised, but there will be no new experimental guidance on how to take the next step.
The trouble is, the circumstances are ripe for people to “detect” things that just ain’t there, get their interpretations cast in cement, and only disown them a quarter century later, by which time contemporry philosophical goals have been nailed down and skeptics got rid of. They haven’t done it yet, but the temptation must be there. Thoughts?
Krauss’s book this year is A Universe from Nothing, more later.
See also: This Just In: Everything Came From Nothing and if You Don’t Agree You Know Nothing – Hunter on Krauss’s argument
Celeb atheists Dawkins and Grayling don’t want to debate apologist Craig because … maybe a reason is now emerging … Larry Krauss!
William Lane Craig is “disingenuous,” and he “shocked” Larry Krauss in a recent debate?
Follow UD News at Twitter!