# Your Mass is NOT from Higgs Boson

Your Mass is NOT from Higgs Boson?

This guy can't be correct, right? He argues that because mostly of a nucleus' mass is made out of the space between quarks (the quark-gluon plasma) then this means that mostly all the mass we are made of doesn't come to be because of the interaction with the Higgs field.

If this guy is correct then there really needs to be an easy to understand explanation for the masses because all popularizers of science make us lay people think that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for all the mass in the atoms and that would be of course v. misleading.

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The statement "The Higgs Boson gives us mass" is incorrect in two different ways. The first one is that it is the Higgs field, not the particle itself, that gives elementary particles mass. The second reason is the one that you have said- that most of the mass of atoms and nuclei are from the energy of quarks binding together, not the energy associated with the Higgs field. Here is a very good website that explains these issues more carefully than most: profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/the-higgs-particle/… –  Rococo May 11 at 16:58
Thanks! I've read the link but I didn't get from it a good (for the layman) analogy as to why the turmoil inside the gluon plasma leads to the other mass (inertia). A certain particle moving through some kind of cosmic molasses is how I see a particle interacting with a higgs field and that's what gives off some mass - that's easy to visualize and the standard popsci explanation - , but what's the other working analogy for the mass coming from the gluon plasma? –  alex May 11 at 17:15
Hi alex- the answer is very simply that all energy can be interpreted as part of the rest mass of a system. This is what the famous $E=mc^2$ is really saying. Even in a hydrogen atom (for example), the mass of an isolated proton plus the mass of an isolated electron is slightly different than the mass of the two combined, because their interaction energy affects the mass of the system. In that system the change is tiny, but inside a nucleus this interaction energy, as well as the kinetic energy of the constituents, is huge and cannot be ignored. –  Rococo May 11 at 18:00
These additional links (from the same website, which I really like) might be helpful: profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/… profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/… profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/… –  Rococo May 11 at 18:03
I get it now! m = E/c^2. The reason for my misunderstanding is that I was searching for something like : "we have energy, energy translates to mass, THEN THAT MASS must be further explained by something equivalent to the mollases analogy that is used for explaining the mass of subatomic particles (given by the interaction with the Higgs field)." I get it now that the other mass that we get from energy doesn't need this further interpretation. Thank you! –  alex May 11 at 18:33
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Higgs mechanism is not the universal mass-responsible detail, but the ultimate. Other mechanisms could give you large quantities of mass - and in fact they do - but there is still some part which they are unable to explain. And that's why the Higgs mechanism is needed.

Numbers for you:

For the atom of hydrogen:
Total mass - about 1 GeV
Electromagnetic field - several eV (billionth parts)
Nuclear force field - none
Masses of electron and quarks - by Higgs mechanism - about 20 MeV
The rest is due to gluons (and virtual quarks) tension and motion.

For other atoms:
Total mass - about 1 GeV per nucleon (proton or neutron)
Electromagnetic field - up to keV per proton (not the field inside the nucleus itself)
Nuclear force field - up to several MeV per nucleon
Electromagnetic field inside the nucleus - up to the same as nuclear force field's part
Masses of electrons and quarks - by Higgs mechanism - about 20 MeV per nucleon
The rest is due to ... see above.

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Sorry if I seem a bit arrogant, and excuse my layness, but there seems to be something missing from your 'answer': The answer to my question. How does the "tension and motion" of the gluons translate into the inertia that we see as a whole for the entire entire atom mass (GeVs) if it's not only the exchange of Higgs bosons between the hadrons and the Higgs field? –  alex May 11 at 16:52
A certain particle moving through some kind of cosmic molasses is how I see a particle interacting with a higgs field and that's what gives off some mass, but what's the other working analogy for the mass coming from the gluon plasma? –  alex May 11 at 16:59
Special Relativity gives you the answer. It tells (and shows how) every kind of energy can take part in the mass. For example, photon is massless. But if we take two photons flying in different directions, then taken as a whole (say, inside a box with mirror walls), they would make some mass. In a similar way, any kinematic energy of particles (quarks and gluons as well) can add up to mass. And non-zero value of some field, say, electric, also would make a box heavier. // And sorry, your image is more like tractive resistance than inertia. Hard to get an adequate image without maths. –  firtree May 11 at 17:53
@firtree: Why do I need two photons? Wouldn't one photon in a box be sufficient (it has no rest mass but it should have relativistic mass)? –  Maciej Piechotka May 11 at 21:44
You can use one photon, if you say that the box is massive, which actually does not lead to simplification. And, thinking about the "relativistic mass" is misguided, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_special_relativity#Controversy . The main idea is that mass of two or more bodies is not the sum of their masses, that's why two photons came to my mind. –  firtree May 12 at 3:23