RE: What is Symmetry Breaking?
June 15, 2017 at 1:13 pm
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2017 at 1:15 pm by Alex K.)
Well, it's a very basic result of relativity that a massive object can't reach light speed at finite energy, and a massless object always travels at the speed of light. The higgs mechanism provides some of the mass in the universe and thus prevents e.g. electrons from being massless. So usually people treat the general relation mass <-> speed as the more fundamental principle and where the mass comes from doesn't really matter for that, so the higgs is not considered the reason for relativity. Especially since there are other sources of mass, e.g. the mass of an atom only comes 1% from the higgs, the rest is binding energy caused by the strong force.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
