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friend
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In what cosmological era did particles get mass? And why did they not have mass before this?
friend said:I wonder if it could be that in the very early universe the higgs field was producing too many higgs bosons, which means the higgs field was fluctuating so much that it may not have been possible for particles to couple to the higgs field; so they did not have mass at that time.
The concept of mass has been around for centuries, with early civilizations recognizing the difference between heavy and light objects. However, the modern concept of mass as a fundamental property of matter was first introduced by Sir Isaac Newton in his laws of motion in the late 17th century.
The discovery that particles have mass was a gradual process that involved many scientists and experiments. One key experiment was conducted by Ernest Rutherford in 1911, where he observed that alpha particles scattered off the atoms of gold. This led to the understanding that atoms have a dense, positively charged nucleus, which contributes to the mass of the atom.
The Higgs boson particle, also known as the "God particle", was theorized in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs and others. However, it wasn't until 2012 that the Higgs boson was officially discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, confirming its role in giving mass to other particles.
According to the Standard Model of particle physics, all particles have mass. However, there are some theories, such as supersymmetry, that suggest the existence of particles without mass. These particles are known as "massless" particles or "zero-mass" particles, and their existence is still being studied and debated by scientists.
The Higgs field is a theoretical field that permeates all of space. As particles interact with this field, they gain mass. This is because the Higgs field "couples" to particles, creating a drag or resistance that slows them down and gives them the appearance of having mass. The Higgs boson is the particle associated with this field, and its discovery confirmed the existence and role of the Higgs field.