A Remark About Mass and Field Theory in Quantum Cosmology

Fields are the fundamental element of being known to physics today. Particles get mass from fields. Field symmetry breaking lets local forces arise such as the strong force and the electroweak force. Massless particles (bosons) exist as vibrations traveling through a non-local field such as the electro-magnetic with bosons such as photons and gravitons. Particles with mass occur in gauge fields a.k.a. local fields. Mass is comprised of Fermions, although heavy bosons with mass (i.e. Higgs boson) can exist virtually (temporarily) before breaking down into other particles.

I wonder if dimensions are micro-gauge fields bound in place? It is remarkable that massless particles are emergent vibrations in a field. Imagine a straight rope laying on the ground. One takes an end of the rope and flips it sending a wave down its length. That is a photon in an electromagnetic field. It is a phenomenal particle at any given place or time where it is moving through yet it is really just the rope/three dimensional field fluctuating.

If one imagines a Higgs field in three dimensions in a shape more like a sphere than a rope, and that field is where the Universe occurs, particles with mass develop through contingent local fields arising within the primary field. Symmetry breaking is the usual suspect for the development of local fields and particles with mass.

In a way, mass seems to be particles that are hierarchically bound within local fields. Massless particles can pass through local fields yet not vice versa. Mass is a hierarchy of standing waves in local fields within the non-local Higgs field.

One wonders about the nature of fields-what determines the scale and quality of a primordial field like the Higgs field, what delimits it, and what its dynamic values would are? Ought a field be expected to have harmonics or to lose energy? Is a field inevitably a collection of quanta emerging from some deeper field?

Does Einstein's ten-value metric tensor of General Relativity in describing the curvature of space-time actually describe changes in quantity and quantity to local Higgs field values (or relationships to condensed mass or gauge fields within)? Is vacuum energy a metric for changes in the Higgs field over time?

For more on fields and the Higgs mechanism Sean Carroll's December 2012 book 'The Particle at the End of the Universe' is a good read.