The Higgs field a new Luminiferous aether?

Question

As of this writing it has been made clear to me that classical physics' Luminiferous aether was a terriblly poor discriptor of space. With the advent of Special Relativity and General Relativity, that aether ceased to be applicable. Today I began reading on the Higgs boson, and the Higgs field. How are those theories different from or similar to the seemingly irrational Luminiferous aether?

P.S. I am a first year student at Bakersfield Community College. If this question seems naive, you now have an explanation.

(EDIT) To me the similarity rests upon their fundamental influences regarding static positions in space. I currently only accept models in which static spacial positions are impossible. Contrastingly relative positions seem quite reasonable. In my humble opinion my naivatisms inhibit me from absorbing and understanding the Higgs boson. If they actually are similar, public protest would probably be more apparant. However, I have put forth my best effort to pose an direct question here.

P.S. The questions Where does space go when it falls? and What happens to time lost when matter accelerates? come much earlier in my studies, and they seem relevant.

Answer 1

Here comes a simple minded answer by an experimentalist.

The luminiferous ether was discarded because it violated special relativity. It presupposed a fixed reference frame of the ether against which everything moved. In special relativity there exists no absolute frame of reference, and special relativity has been vindicated many times experimentally.

The Higgs field, as also the vacuum sea in general, comes from quantum field theory formulations of the interactions of elementary particles. All quantum field theories are consistent with special relativity , and thus the Higgs field is also consistent with special relativity. It therefore cannot play the role of the luminiferous ether, and also the same holds for the vacuum sea, which is seething with virtual pairs of particle/antiparticle.

At the level of your studies this should suffice.

Answer 2

Actually, the luminiferous ether was a very good idea which turned out to be wrong. The Higgs field (or at least the Higgs boson) is another very good idea that may or may not turn out to be wrong. In this sense they could be similar.
Lots of very smart people believed in the luminiferous ether for many years. The difference between an ether and a field is fairly subtle. The difference in Maxwell's theory before and after Einstein is even more subtle. Maxwell's equations did not change, but the prediction (retrodiction) for the Michelson-Morley experiment did change, because other equations did change (Shift from Galileo transform to Lorentz transform.)
The luminiferous ether was a perfectly good mathematical theory. The Higgs field is also a perfectly good mathematical theory. In this way they are similar. I am not sure about your idea that they both represent some kind of fixed point or maybe an absolute rather than relative spacetime.

Answer 3

The Higgs field doesn't interact with photons so it can't be the aether. In fact, the Higgs field has no effect on the theory of relativity.

Answer 4

Quote: "How are those theories different from or similar to the seemingly irrational Luminiferous aether?"

The Higgs Field attempts to be founded in Relativity.

I propose the Higgs Field is a product of a foundation that is supported by Extreme Relativity; formed by Quantum Entangled Systems of causality.

This perspective formed not from an aether point of view, but one of Relativity, I've been coordinating relationships that have the potential of unifying physics without contradictions. To include instantaneous, gravity, electromagnetism, force, energy...

Rather than produce a blog, I chose to create an online live document that I could update and store my reference materials. A public access cloud-based document.

http://QESdunn.pbworks.com

I was posed with a question last year: "What is Nothing?"

I was not looking for anything substantial, but I began thinking through the concept of nothing and found "Nothing" could only exist with contradictions. So nothing does not exist.

The result of a great deal of reflection and research is Quantum Entangled Systems (QESdunn).

My problem with Albert Einstein's E=mc^2 is that c is fixed, while we know that the speed of light changes through anything including a vacuum in proximity to other energies; i.e. relativistic. So special rules of relativity were set up to compensate. Basically applying scalar compensation to the universe one relationship at a time; i.e. c multiplied by some function.

The Standard Model is a tentative proof that all of existence is causal; otherwise the Standard Model would not be repeatable. Relativity associated with any one component causally requires all of the observable universe to be relativistic.

From my perspective we seemed to be trying to model our visual perspectives instead of system perspectives. Moderating our observables with relativity.

How do you see observables from a System of Relativity perspective?

The result of my living document is my present TOE+ which models the foundation in which to build Extreme Relativity. A place to build the Standard Model, my work is not the Standard Model itself; rather its foundation.

The result has been a potential pathway leading to the control of time and space, and other alternate dimensional spaces of our design.

The resultant relativistic aether is formed by non-relativistic quantum entangled systems of causal connectedness.

I interactively relate, therefore I am.

Answer 5

The Higgs field is the aether.

The Michelson-Morley experiment disproved a stationary aether. The Sagnac effect disproved a completely entrained aether by the Earth. The aether is neither stationary nor completely entrained by the Earth.

Aether is displaced by matter.

Particles of matter are condensations of aether.

Aether has mass.

'Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation in NASA Hubble Image ' http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/mar/HQ_12-068_Hubble_Dark_Core.html

"This technique revealed the dark matter in Abell 520 had collected into a "dark core," containing far fewer galaxies than would be expected if the dark matter and galaxies were anchored together. Most of the galaxies apparently have sailed far away from the collision. "This result is a puzzle," said astronomer James Jee of the University of California in Davis, lead author of paper about the results available online in The Astrophysical Journal. "Dark matter is not behaving as predicted, and it's not obviously clear what is going on. It is difficult to explain this Hubble observation with the current theories of galaxy formation and dark matter.""

The dark matter core does not defy explanation. The dark matter core is not a puzzle. The dark matter core is not difficult to explain. It is obviously clear what is going on.

Non-baryonic dark matter and galaxies are not anchored together. Matter moves through and displaces the aether.