Ok - Arp supporters out there.  I want your thoughts on this one.  Narlikar and Arp proposed the Variable Mass Hypothesis to explain intrinsic redshifts.  As Arp explained it in "Seeing Red", Seyfert and other active galactic nuclei are ejecting quasars.  The quasars are hypothesized to be newly created matter and Narlikar&Arp propose that when the quasars are first ejected their atoms have low masses because they haven't yet communicated with the universe.  Over time as the newly created quasar's light sphere expands it communicates with more of the universe and particle masses increase and redshift decreases.

That is the concept of the variable mass hypothesis.  What has always bothered me about that description is that it seemed difficult to understand how the expanding light sphere itself could be connected to particle mass increase.   So I wrote up my own conception of this process to Morley Bell a few years ago in which I proposed that if the universe contained an underlying "machian field" from which newly created particles could aquire the property of mass, then the variable mass hypothesis could be explained.  What I didn't realize at the time was that the Higgs field of the Standard Model provides just this characteristic.  

At lunch today a colleague brought up the discovery of the Higgs Boson and was explaining that the theory is that the Higgs field imparts mass to subatomic particles.  As I have never read into the Higgs field/Higgs Boson before I was unaware of this characteristic.   One of the pitfalls of the N&A VMH has always been that it didn't provide a mechanism to explain the aquisition of mass by newly created particles in ejected quasars.  But the Standard model of particle physics has proposed a mechanism that might explain the VMH all along and it just needed confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson.

Now that the Higgs Boson seems to been have discovered it would seem that the Higgs field is real.   If that is the case then we have a natural explanation for the variable mass hypothesis and intrinsic redshifts in quasars.   A Seyfert galaxy ejects a quasar composed of matter newly materialized from some previous energy state.  The particles in this new quasar have low particle masses because they have not yet aquired mass from the Higgs field and their redshifts are therefore shifted to longer wavelengths (the mechanism of this low particle mass redshifting seems to need explanation).   As the quasar ages it has more time in communication with the Higgs field and the subatomic particles aquire additional mass from the interaction with the Higgs field with accompanying drop in redshift. 

What do you think?  It seems that perhaps we are close to the elusive mechanism behind intrinsic redshift.   Obviously this is a purely qualitative conjecture.  I don't know enough about the Higgs field to know if the mass property of an ejected quasar would evolve via the Higgs field  as Arp has empirically uncovered.   But I don't think mainstream researchers would necessarily make this connection because they assume there is no matter creation of the type Arp proposes.

Dave 

David,

Interesting thoughts.  The only thing I would question here is ... why would there be a gradual acquisition of mass for the particles?  At the very tiny scales in which the Higgs seems to operate, I would think that any mass would be acquired in quantum chunks.    Why would that be gradual, I wonder.  It would seem that, once a newly formed particle interacts with the Higgs field, the tiny amount of mass imparted would happen, for all intents and purposes, instantaneously. 

While I like the Arp/Narlikar VMH, and even gave a little thought to how the Higgs would fit into it, I did not give it as much thought as you have. 

How would you answer my question concerning a gradual acquisition of mass versus the "close to instantaneous" acquisition of mass that the Higgs at its tiny scale seems to imply.

Looking forward to your reply.

- Mike Petersen

That's a tough one. I haven't been able to find a good stick-to-the-ribs satisfying explanation of how the Higgs field imparts mass. Are all the public-facing science sites interpreting things wrongly, or are they repeating scientific community wisdom?

From here:

The Higgs field acts on each elementary particle differently. An electron passes through the field relatively unscathed and is therefore mostly energy. The muon is slowed down and hence has some mass and a lot of energy while the quark is almost all mass and very little energy.

That can't be right. Why would you actually slow down in a Higgs field... unless the Higgs field was fixed and not relative? Or unless it ends up guided by the things to which it imparts mass, e.g. does it concentrate around planets, does it swirl around black holes, does it fit MOND?

Or perhaps I am (and others are?) missing a way that the Higgs can not alter any velocities, but can seem to in your own frame? Or maybe the "drag" analogy everyone uses is completely inappropiate - something is getting exchanged for momentum without affecting velocity one bit?

Can anything slow down from light speed?

There's one rather interesting tidbit I came across:

Scientists know that when an electron passes through a positively charged crystal lattice of atoms (a solid), the electron's mass can increase as much as 40 times.

It might be important, or it might not be. Given the QM tying together of position and momentum, if you can monkey with the momentum, maybe there's a better way to explain mass aquisition that start from momentum anomalies. There's a nice document explaining the strength of the effect and some sample materials in which it occurs here.

To get back to your point, if folks are indeed thinking of the Higgs field as a "drag" on particles interacting with it, that might indeed make an opening for VMH in the initial stages. Would that actually sustain an m = at² relationship? Is there an alternative scenario where matter gains mass quickly at first but the gain slows down until they approach more 'universal' values in a time scale during which a quasar evolves into a galaxy?

I've often wondered what the difference could possibly be between the matter created by an AGN versus, say, something from smashing together electrons and positrons. Why, for example, wouldn't particles coming out of an accelerator be going light speed, or near it, instead of demonstrating known adjusted-for-relativity masses. (I know QSSC thinks it has an answer in that annihilations aren't the same as C-field particle creation since the C-field is too dilute to work anywhere outside of huge concentrations of mass.)

Here's another odd thought that comes to mind: what if the drag analogy is true and the Higgs field is actually static (perhaps concomitant with the microwave background, as we're also moving relative to that)? If so, you might be able to determine an asymmetry in quasar ejection/evolution that depends on the Seyfert's velocity relative to CMBR, or some other fixed metric, and show the existence of a "preferred frame". I don't really have a dog in that race, but it would be mind-blowing.

Apologia for the scattered thoughts; my kids woke me up at 5 am today :)

-- Ritchie

Mike,  That is a good question.   I can only speculate because I'm not familiar enough about what is and is not allowed with the Higgs field.  It may have nothing to do with intrinsic redshifts.   What caught my attention here is that the Higgs field would impart mass to particles.   The analogy they give on the CERN website is a famous person passing through a room and attracting other people as he/she moves forward.  That analogy sounds like a gradual accumulation of mass.    But perhaps the gradual accumulation could still occur in steps.  Arp does argue for redshift quantization in quasars and galaxies.  We could perhaps liken this to a phase change in a substance - just as a sample must absorb a certain amount of energy to change phase perhaps the new matter would need to have a certain amount of interaction with the Higgs field before changing particle masses. 

But I think you're also asking why the particles do not immediately upon interacting with the Higgs field aquire the standard mass values.   If - as Arp surmises - ejected quasars are materialized from a previous energy state or field then I can imagine that one possible way the interaction with the Higgs field would affect mass would be a gradual (perhaps quantized but progressing over time) increase in mass.   Without understanding how the Higgs field would impart mass to newly created matter created in Seyferts it is hard to form a basis for concluding that an instantaneous particle mass increase should be expected any more than a gradual increase. 

If Arp's empirical model is a correct description of what is happening (quasar ejection with decreasing redshift as they age), and if the variable mass hypothesis is the explanation for the intrinsic redshift, then it would seem the particle mass increase imparted by the Higgs field (if that is the source) would not be instantaneous but would have to be gradual and in jumps if quantization is real and not just numerology.

Dave

Ritchie,  I too saw that mention of the 40x mass increase for an electron.   I don't know how that fits into the Higgs Boson/field issue.    Understanding how the Higgs field imparts mass would really help this discussion. 

I think regarding the slowing down they are saying that in terms of conservation of mass-energy if a particle aquires mass from interaction with the Higgs field that it must slow down.

Dave

Everything's been analogies so far, but the analogies I've run across so far just suck.

David Russell said:

I think regarding the slowing down they are saying that in terms of conservation of mass-energy if a particle aquires mass from interaction with the Higgs field that it must slow down.

That's my general impression, too... but what I'm trying to sort out is: if we are talking about things like ejections from AGNs, what must the particles slow down relative to? The Higgs field is supposed to be a scalar field of universal, constant (or near-constant) strength, which doesn't even seems as though it would allow for the sorts of directionality effects you would get if you were moving through a scalar field with any sort of gradients.

I could be off the mark there, but if those are the properties the Higgs field ought to be imbued with, then the acquisition of mass should not be accompanied with a slowdown, should it? Unless the slowdown isn't really from the Higgs field itself, but from the interaction of the newly-acquired mass with a different field, either vector or scalar with gradients.

Getting more 'visible' to gravity, for example, but that wouldn't necessarily be a slowdown, but rather just a stronger acceleration vector, which would be a slowdown if it were trying to escape, I guess.

That could still work for the ejection scenario - a little being pulled back towards the host galaxy, a lot being pulled together into the increasing gravity field?

Am I full of something brown and smelly that isn't miso paste? :)

-- Ritchie

Ritchie Annand said:

Is there an alternative scenario where matter gains mass quickly at first but the gain slows down until they approach more 'universal' values in a time scale during which a quasar evolves into a galaxy?

My father has developed such an alternative VMH. According to this one mass increases as (1 - exp[-a t²]). I think this mass function has the properties you mentioned. What do you think?