# What does the Higgs boson have to do with the uncertainty principle and quantum oscillations?

I was looking in New Scientist the other day when I saw something to do with the Higgs boson, energy levels, entropy, space/time, quantum oscillations and many other things. It was in a feature to do with symmetry. I have read up about this and I know that the magazine does not accept original works, so I guess that this is mainstream physics.

The above is a diagram of what I'm talking about. This is how it appears in the magazine:

According to NS, a ball (like the blue one above) that is sitting at the top of a piece of space/time warped like this has an unstable energy level and position. Given the slightest nudge, it will "fall" into a lower energy state and quantum oscillations (which occur as is "rolls" up and down the "pit") caused by the uncertainty principle create Higgs bosons in the Higgs field.

I have pondered this repetitively, and it still looks like nonsense (even in the eyes of quantum physics). What I want to know is: has this been regarded as true or is this "complete nonsense"? And if so, how can the uncertainty principle cause such things to happen?

What I do not understand is how a vacuum generates Higgs particles if it has no mass - unless it's trading it with energy.

What is actually happening (the magazine hasn't described it in enough detail for me to understand)?

(It's hard for me to visualise; it's an entirely new concept to visualise for me.)

• What the picture seems to be describing is the vaccum expectation value. This seems to be one of the (debatable) misuses of the uncertainty principle. Jun 27, 2014 at 18:22
• @jinawee Found this: enigmass.in2p3.fr/IMG/jpg/higgs-2.jpg A bunch of other sources say similar, is this a fundamental misconception - if a misuse of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? Jun 27, 2014 at 18:48

As always, quantum fluctuations (embodied by the uncertainty principle) will continue to jiggle the vacuum state back and forth along a radial line, and these oscillations give rise to Higgs particles (the "steepness" of the curve is what gives the Higgs its particular mass, 126 GeV). Notice that there can also be rolling along the circle at the bottom for "free" (it costs no energy). These motions are associated with the massless Goldstone bosons that are "eaten" by the weak vector bosons to give them a mass (the massiveness of the $W^{\pm}$ and $Z$ bosons is why many nuclear decays take a while, and one reason why nuclear forces have such short range).