The Aho of Physics, revisited

Some years ago, I wrote a piece on the Higgs Boson, aka the God Particle, titled The Aho of Physics.

Since then I’ve been struggling to “make sense” of what exactly the Higgs does to impart “mass” to the myriad of fundamental particles of the Standard Model. Just so I don’t lose anyone, the Standard Model is simply a set of “things” which when combined this way or that give rise to our observable Universe. The “things” that are used to build the model, we call them fundamental particles.

The thing about fundamental particles is that they are fundamental only until someone decides that they are not! No jokes, it works like this. At first we thought atoms were “fundamental”. Until we realized that, wait, there are more fundamental things inside atoms, i.e., electrons, protons and neutrons. The electrons, protons and neutrons became fundamental. Until, you guessed it, we found something even more fundamental: protons are made up of three quarks and these are held together by a force, so we need a particle to represent that force and so it goes on and on, one particle for each type of force, yada yada yada, and voila, we get the Standard Model of particle physics.

But wait, I digress. We’re not here to talk about the Standard Model per se. In the model, there is the Higgs boson which has been added so as to impart mass to the various particles. It does this by breaking symmetry. We’re here to talk about what the heck is breaking symmetry and how does the Higgs’ symmetry breaking impart mass to particles and hence it gets the name The God Particle.

We, each one of us, experience the breaking of symmetry in our daily lives. We learn from Newtonian Physics that any two objects when dropped simultaneously from a height will fall at the same rate. This is the symmetry that is imposed by Newton’s Laws of Motion:

All Objects, Irrespective of its Mass, Will Fall At The Same Rate.

Yet, we observe that indeed this is not the case. A bowling ball falls faster than a feather. NASA made this super cool demonstration of how indeed this symmetry of falling rate of objects of varying mass can be restored by evacuating air. This fascinating video documents their fantastic demo:

From this video we learn that when Air is present at every point in space through which the objects fall, the symmetry of their rate of fall is broken and heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. However, when Air is evacuated from every point in space through which the objects fall, the symmetry in their rate of fall is restored: Once the Air is evacuated, heavier and lighter objects both fall at the same rate!

This is exactly how the Higgs breaks symmetry. The Higgs Field has a non-zero value at every point in space (space-time if you are so Relativistically inclined!). The presence of this non-zero value breaks the symmetry between the various fundamental particles and each one picks up an appropriate mass depending on its interaction with the Higgs. This is essentially how it all plays out.

This got me thinking some more. Are there some symmetries that we break on an individual / personal level? For example, do we afford equal weight to Night vs Day? Good vs Bad? Right vs Wrong? Work vs Rest? Are we equanimous towards our cravings vs our aversions?

At a fundamental level, both entries in the above pairs of opposites are actually equal. One looses value without the other. (Leave aside the craving/aversion pair for now). There is an inherent symmetry between perceived opposites. In a life skills / self development class that I took many years ago, this law of opposites was taught to us as:

Opposite Values are Complementary

(Some indeed remember the opposites as complimentary but they are mistaken. It is complementary, with an “e”.)

This inherently symmetric world full of apparent opposites is broken by each one of us on a daily basis. We each prefer one over the other in the pair. Some prefer Day over Night. Some indeed prefer Bad over Good (again, our own definition of Good and Bad comes into play here). Work and Rest also are an opposite pair. Both are needed to be precisely balanced so as to not break the symmetry; we need rest to be able to work hard.

We are symmetry breaking all the time! Each one of us. Daily. This progressive breaking of symmetry leads us to prefer our cravings over our aversions. We tend to run towards our cravings and run away from our aversions. In either scenario, we are the ones running. And eventually we get tired. All this running, why?

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The thing about symmetry breaking is that it results in us becoming unstable; even a slight disturbance de-stabilizes us. Not only are we de-stabilized, we get stuck off-center (the state of maximum stability, rest). In the spiritual parlance, this is termed as ungrounded.

Let’s stop running. Lets move from the inequality “Cravings > Aversions” to the equality “Cravings = Aversions” and be at ease. At rest. Let Happiness manifest.

Let’s restore Symmetry of the Opposites in our life.

Let the Higgs be the symmetry breaker for all of us. It is the God Particle after all!

(To learn more about techniques to restore symmetries in your life, visit artofliving.org in your country and find local centers with more information.)