“Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean” by Matt Strassler

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A fascinating and enlightening book on quantum field theory and how the Higgs field gives mass (to be more precise, the rest mass) to the particles found in the Standard Model of particle physics. Except, as the author points out, particles don’t exist: the best way to understand modern physics is to see the particles as confined standing waves with different level of interactions with the Higgs field.

The first part of the book gives an introduction to physics, starting with Newton’s laws of motion and Galilean relativity, which states that the laws of motion are the same in all inertial reference frames, followed by Einstein’s Relativity. This would lead to the author’s way of looking at the world, in terms of waves, fields and mediums, necessary to understand how modern quantum field theory describes the world. The author admits that we don’t really know what kind of medium ‘empty space’ is: it is the medium that the particles of the Standard Model interact in. For this reason, the author concentrates more on fields (as do other scientists).

Now, the reader has to make the leap, guided by the author, to understand that what we consider as particles are actually standing waves vibrating in the various fields: an electron is a standing wave in an electron field. Protons and neutrons are composites, made up of standing waves of quarks and gluons that vibrate inside the protons and neutrons. And it is the Higgs field, which interacts with these fields, that make the standing waves possible. The frequency (and energy) of these standing waves are what give the ‘particles’ their rest mass. The photon does not have a rest mass because it does not interact with the Higgs field, so it has no standing wave, but must keep moving (as a travelling wave) at, of course, the speed of light. Once this is accepted by the reader, the rest of the book, briefly covering cosmology, the puzzle of vacuum energy, and so on, should be more easily understood.

By the end, the reader should be able to get some understanding of how modern quantum field theory views the world in terms of fields and waves. The puzzle of the medium of ‘empty’ space that the field and waves operate in will have be left for future physicists to try to answer.

Book read from 2024/09/30 to 2024/10/09