Demystifying the Higgs Boson with Leonard Susskind
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN repeatedly recommends it as an approachable, math-light route to understanding mass and the Higgs field.
What it is
Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind explains what the Higgs mechanism is and what it means to give mass to particles. He also covers what is at stake for physics and cosmology.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2016 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec bitkrieg · 2016-08 · on “There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)”
If anyone is interested in the mechanics of the higgs field / basic quantum mechanics in general, I found this lecture to be an excellent explanation: [this video]
Strong rec simiones · 2022-07 · on “Large Hadron Collider discovers three new exotic particles”
The mass of the massive gauge bosons, the W and Z bosons. Edit: there is an excellent in-depth (but math-light) explanation about the Higgs mechanism by Leonard Susskind. I highly recommend it if you are interested, it lasts about 1h (plus some Q&A) and is extremely approachable, while being presented by an established authority in the field. [this video]
Strong rec tsimionescu · 2022-10 · on “Inside the Proton”
If you're interested in the Higgs mechanism as a layman, I highly highly recommend this talk by Leonard Susskind: [this video] It's about 1 hour long (plus some questions) and it goes through some basic ideas of what it means for something to have mass and all the way to the Higgs mechanism.
Strong rec tsimionescu · 2024-09 · on “How the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles”
If anyone wants to dig deeper, there is an excellent lecture on YouTube by Leonard Susskind. This goes into some details on how fields in general give mass to (composite) particles, and how the Higgs field has certain properties that allow it to give mass to elementary particles. It goes only into a tiny bit of math, absolutely intelligible at the high-school or at least undergraduate level. [this video]
Recommends simiones · 2022-04 · on “It took me 10 years to understand entropy”
> no one really knows what mass is. We only know that mass bends space-time curve, hence gravity. Mass is much better understood by its role in inertia. Basically mass is the amount of energy you need to exchange with a thing to change its current speed. This observation works from Newtonian mechanics to QM and GR as well. Now, why do things have mass? The famous E=mc² explains this for most things: they have mass because something inside them has potential or kinetic energy. This works all the way down to the atomic level - the mass of a proton for example is almost entirely explained by the potential energy of the quarks being held together in a small volume; the total mass of the quarks t
Recommends tsimionescu · 2022-10 · on “Inside the Proton”
The quarks that are bound in a way we call a proton are held together by the strong force at a certain distance from each other - that distance is what we consider the volume of the proton, with the quarks being "inside that volume". This system of 3 quarks has some amount of potential energy, and/or some amount of kinetic energy from the relative movement of the 3 quarks. The mass of this system is then given essentially by E=mc^2, with E being this kinetic energy. There is a very good video of a lecture by Leonard Susskind that explains why energy and mass are interchangeable in this way if you want a more in-depth explanation: [this video]