How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass

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Fermilab physicists really care about the mass of the W boson. They spent nearly a decade recording collisions in the Tevatron collider and another decade analysing the data. This culminated in the April 7 announcement that this obscure particle’s mass seems to be heavier than expected. So why do we care? Because understanding why this particle even has mass was one of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of the subatomic world. And because measuring its precise mass either doubles down on our current understanding or reveals a path to an even deeper knowledge. The FermiLab discrepancy is a tantalizing hint of the latter.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Fernando Franco Félix, Graeme Gossel, & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria
GFX Visualizations: Fernando Franco Félix
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
Executives in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski, Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming (PBS): Gabrielle Ewing

Spacetime is produced by Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

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[Josecannoli]

I feel like this channel started out late high-school level and has slowly pushed us into late college level stuff. As some one who’s been here from the start its great and I feel like I have received a valuable education minus the deep math

[Robert_McGarry_Poems]

I love being talked through the hieroglyphics.

[antonovcharenko]

That’s one of the most challenging recent videos. Wish I could say I learnt something, but it doesn’t click yet.
Some learning and re-watching to do first!

Don’t dumb it down, it’s entertaining to be pushed to learn.

[KerbalHub]

I'm not supposed to be in this class...

[crowlsyong]

This show is one of the best things I’ve ever come across. Thank you PBS, Matt, Editors, Effects, Audio, and all the nameless folks who bring this freely to us all. What a time to be alive.

[ketsuekikumori]

Matt: Don't worry. It's not on the test.
Some physics teacher somewhere: Oh, but it is!

[tretolien]

This is probably one of your more difficult episodes to grasp for non-physics majors, yet also one of your most fascinating, it will be exciting to see whether the Fermilab result holds up to scrutiny!

[Aaron-Fife]

I can usually follow along and understand each episode, but this one went way over my head. Guess I need to refresh my memory with a few more episodes...



Of SpaceTime.

[JB-giph]

This was excellent. The 3-D mapping of the "Mexican Hat" really helped me understand how a symmetrical field can still have random elements. That "ahh, now I get it!" moment.

[nice]

This was such a great explanation beyond the classic "the particles bump into the higgs field slowing them down" explanation.

[sencoptico]

Finally an explanation of the higgs mechanism that answers a lot of my "ok, but where did it come from?" questions! I love this episode.

[protestifications]

Me: ok time to sleep
SpaceTime: Why does the W Boson’s mass matter?
Me: 🤔

[viscinium]

There's something akin to cosmic horror in this, but it's also beautiful

[APieceOfThePast]

I think you just blew my brain. I completely concur with everyone else - this channel started out with A/S to A Level Physics and we’re now well into University level. That’s to be expected (and excellent). Amazing work… but I somehow feel like I skipped some chapters in the textbook somewhere! Is this just a clever trick to get me to rewatch all the past videos for a sixth and seventh time?!

[craigsimpson]

Silly question, : If there are a ring of valid vacuum states available, and the universe has settled upon one of the many, then is there any reason for the "interior" of a black hole to also settle into the same state, or could a black hole potentially contain another one of the many possible options? Likewise, as the curvature becomes increasingly more extreme around and inside the event horizon, is it possible for several vacuum states to exist in discrete boundaries further and further within the black hole without conflict? If so, would this lead to varied values for the Higgs boson within each level, leading to nested shells of increasing (or decreasing) vacuum states? If so, what consequence would this have for the "mass" of the entire system? Presumably, the confined surface (volume) of a black hole would not only permit different values to the infinite and flat external spacetime of the observable universe, right? Feels like I'm definitely missing something here... probably means that I need to rewatch the entire series again, eh?

[genericytprofile]

It's episodes like this that make me wanna go rewatch the 10 or so episodes before. I find it's like a new layer of understanding being revealed every rewatch. Goes to show how info dense these things really are!

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[DylanOLeary]

As as non-physics major, I really like seeing these episodes which explain the formula and then show how it gets converted to some kind of real world representation. It's a gap I often have a hard time bridging in my head.

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I'm brasilian and I'm learning English. This channel is very good 👍🏾

[monkeywrench]

Can't get enough of this channel !! Super educational and helps me to feel like I know something now.