The question is why is there a Higgs Boson is commonly asked in our group of engineers and business neighbors. There are lots of good explanations. One is provided by the PhD Comics guys. Recently there was a question from an electrical engineer, what is the source of the Higgs field? Is it like the electromagnetic field, that comes from accelerating electrons? The force of the electromagnetic field is carried by the Photon, shown in the picture below.
No, The Higgs field and the Higgs Boson is a scalar field, where the Photon and the Gluons that hold the nucleus of atoms together are vector fields.
While searching in the upstairs library I came across a nice explanation that is beyond the cartoon versions - which BTW are very good at setting the stage - but without all the real math needed to connect the dots.
The Higgs is based on the assumption there is a scalar field, the Higgs Field, the permeates all of space. This field couples to particles, including massless particles to give them potential energy and of course according to the mass energy relation E = MC2, a mass. The stronger the coupling, the more massive the particle.
From the very accessible book Concepts of Mass in Complementary Physics and Philosophy, Max Jammer
The way particles are thought to acquire mass is their interactions with the Higgs field is somewhat analogous to the way pieces of blotting paper absorb ink. In such an analogy the pieces of paper represent individual particles and the ink represents energy, or mass. Just as pieces of paper are different size and thickness soak up varying amounts of ink, different particles "soak up" varying amounts of energy or mass. The observed mass of a particle depends on the particle's "energy absorbing" ability, and on the strength of the Higgs field in space.
The Higgs process is not generated in the particle, it is only transferred to the particle from the Higgs field, which contained it in the form of energy. The store of energy can be thought of as a source of inertial mass, just as the inverse that inertial mass can be thought of as a store of energy.
In Jammer's book, the Higg's particle and the Higgs field had not been found, now it has. The next big question is why do specific particles have specific masses? What are the rules that say why specific particles weigh certain amounts? What are the rules governing these masses.
At the time of the Jammer book, the paper Inertia as a Zero-Point-Field Lorentz Force was the basis of the theory of mass that used the Higgs before it was discovered. BTW, the link here is to www.arXiv.org. This is a pre-print library, that used to be located at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Here is most of everything you need to find out about current science topics, including the actual answers to my issue with the populist notions of complex adaptive systems - see the Nonlinear Sciences section near the bottom of the home page for Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems.
Actual studies like "Opinions, Conflicts and Consensus: Modeling Social Dynamics in a Collective Environment" are an example. With this source, you can start your move beyond the populist approach found in the agile world that many time passes as tested advice, but of course is only opinion.
So, The discovery of the Higgs is just the beginning of a whole new search for answering Mach's question - why is there mass?
