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.
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