James Fodor

speaker

3,084 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Aug

James Fodor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Science of Everything Podcast · Episode 164: Gauge Theory and the Higgs Boson · 30 Aug 2026 podcast

Well, the answer there is that these um the gluons do not couple with the Higgs field, and so they don't have mass.

That's why they don't have mass.

And it's um similar with the case of the photon.

So only the weak gauge bosons get mass, the the other ones don't.

It also turns out that the Higgs mechanism also explains why any of the particles have mass, not just the gauge bosons, but actually the fermions too.

They also couple with the Higgs field, and because of the vacuum expectation value, they gain mass too.

I the mechanism is slightly different in terms of exactly how the mathematics works, but it it comes from the same ultimate source, which is the vacuum exp the non-zero vacuum expectation value in the coupling with the Higgs field.

So that's pretty cool.

We actually, by introducing this Higgs field, have now an explanation where all of the particles gain their mass.

The Higgs field itself, as I said, starts with four degrees of freedom.

After spontaneous symmetry breaking, it kind of loses three of those, which are absorbed by the weak uh gauge bosons, and it's left with only one degree of freedom left.

And this i this gives rise to the Higgs boson.

So when you hear people talk about the Higgs boson and the Higgs boson being discovered, which uh happened in twenty twelve, that's what they're referring to.

It's this kind of leftover of the rest of the Higgs field.

Now, here it's uh maybe you'll sort of realize why it's misleading when sometimes, and it in most of the popular accounts and even some more scholarly accounts, you will say that the Higgs boson accounts for the origin of mass or it gives rise to mass.

This is really not correct.

The Higgs field and the Higgs mechanism gives rise to mass.

The Higgs boson is.

is a part of that process, but it's not like it it's not like a Higgs boson is interacting with the other particles to give them mass.

That's not correct.

Showing 621–640 of 3,084 · page 32 of 155