The infinite space of the Universe

Can you explain further the idea of symmetry breaking? Also the Higgs mechanism and the role of the Higgs Boson?
How are symmetries and laws of conservation related? Does the breaking of a symmetry in this context (the electroweak split) result in the separation of a conservation law? Or is this a complete misunderstanding of the relationship between the two things? If the pre-existing topology is not a result of the fields what defines or shapes this topology? Was this topology something inherent in the BB and thus inevitable for example or did it evolve afterwards as a result of other factors such as energy/mass distribution (for example)?

I'm not pretending that I'm not a million miles out of my depth here, but it seems to me that if they can't find it, it would just mean that they can't find it, not that it doesn't exist.Would they actually be able to prove that it doesn't exist?Thanks for the replies.

Do you understand the theory or are you arguing semantics just for arguements sake?

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All great truths begin as blasphemies

If there was an absence of anything even my God there would be no branes to collide.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

There are two ways of making a probability conclusion. One is to see where things are pointing to - and the other is to see where they are pointing from. The issue of transitory and accumulative increments have no effect here, and here's why.Now anyone can claim a conclusion scenario by making reasonable, scientific assessments where a process is heading, and there is really no means to prove them wrong - its like the climate fiasco, whereby no one's going to be around to say they were wrong.But where is everything pointing from? The issue here is pivotal, and generally never addressed, or made to appear like something else than what the piture is realling saying - thus we find space is touted as either infinite, always prevailed, etc.The pivotal and impacting question is, whatever we say was the first entity, whether this be space, a particle, the BB or whatever one chooses, it also means, by subsequence, nothing else existed at that juncture. Then something happened - that first entity heaved, expanded, heated, burst, exploded, formed other things, or whatever. Now remember, this last fact is based on the premise there was one entity and nothing else but that one entity.This means that first, primal entity had nothing inside it which was seperate or independent of that entity - else it was not the first entity, and we also will negate the premise of there not being anything else. By subsequence, we have to conclude there was an external factor impacting on that first entity to make it become activated. But wait - this also contradicts the premise there was nothing else - so how can we allow an external factor? IMHO, it is the latter factor which subscribes and allows only a Creator resultant universe. It appears totally reasonable here, that a complexity has to have at its foundation a greater complexity and one able to produce that complexity.If I am in error, then I will be very enlightened with any other alternative being applicable? IMHO, if there is logic in science now - then it means it is most probable that there was logic at the beginning also.

As more time goes by where they do not find the Higgs, the stronger the evidence becomes that something is wrong with the Standard Model - the LHC should almost certainly find it if it exists in way we think it exists. If we don't find it, something is wrong with our understanding of the SM, and this will push research into other areas which may well provide a route towards Grand Unification and eventually a Theory of Everything.If we find the Higgs, we just cheer and say - yep, thought so. It doesn't actually advance us very much. This is the problem when experiment is lagging so far behind theory. If the SSC had come on line as expected, god knows where we would be by now...

No problem - course starts in three weeks - is 24 x 1 hour lectures, and a course fee of 2995

Oh.
Just out of interest do you really teach such a course?Can you reccommend a decent book that can explain the basis of these concepts without requiring a Phd in maths to get past the first chapter?

A symmetry is basically when some change is applied to physical system and that change doesn't affect the system. The symmetry is global if the same change is applied everywhere. It is local if a different change is applied at each location. For every global symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law.
Symmetry under time translation => Conservation of energy
Symmetry under space translation => Conservation of momentum
Symmetry under rotations => Conservation of angular momentum
Symmetry under complex number rotation => Conservation of electric charge.
e.t.c. Symmetry breaking is when the laws of physics appear differently to you, due to some condition of your environment.
A very rough analogy is conservation of momentum. Momentum is always conserved, however here on earth when you throw a ball it appears to lose momentum and fall to the ground. Of course this is due to the friction with air. However having air as a background rather than truly empty space means the effective physics on earth is quite different to the true physics. Symmetry breaking is basically when some background thing (Air, a field, e.t.c.) causes physics to appear different. The Higg's field is currently in it's vacuum state. That is the state with lowest energy. This Higg's vacuum causes the electroweak force to effectively seperate. Just like air causes an effective loss of conservation of momentum. No, because electroweak symmetry is a local symmetry. Only global symmetry is associated with conservation laws. To be totally accurate however a global symmetry does get destroyed in electroweak symmetry breaking. In that case the symmetry is gone.Now might be a good time to demonstrate the power of mathematics in physics.
Let's say I have the field which describes electrons, called the dirac field. Then I say that I want this field to have a symmetry under rotations by a complex number. Further more I want this field to be symmetric under local rotations by a complex number, that is the complex number I'm rotating by can be different at each point in spacetime. Now that I demand this, I work through the mathematics and see what it implies. Basically it implies the existence of the electromagentic field.
This works with all local symmetries, so basically:Global symmetries means conservation laws.
Local symmetries means existence of a new force.To give another example local symmetry of multiplication by a 3x3 matrix implies the existence of gluons and the strong force.Edited by Son Goku, : Update and edit.

Thankyou for your reply. I appreciate your time.I attended(ish) lectures by TW Kibble and Abdus Salaam at college and so desperately wish that I had then realised the opportunity afforded me. If ever there was proof that youth is wasted on the young it is I. From which symmetries are the conservation of spin and color derived? I don't understand the term "Higgs field". I get the concept of the 4 fundamental forces of nature as fields but what is the Higgs field? What role does the Higgs boson play in the Higgs field? Is it the "force carrier" particle? Understood (I think). Thankyou for making this clearer than any previous explanation I have heard. Can you explain how this works in more detail?
What makes it local rather than global?I appreciate that this might be getting to the point where
A) Maths becomes the only meaningful method of describing these things
B) I am completely out of my depth
C) It becomes too time consuming for you to try and explainAs such can you reccommend any books that are of a suitable level that might shed some light on the basics of these topics? I am not mathematically illiterate but rusty is an undertatement. My undergraduate physics course was all too long ago.................

I believe you are trying to conceptualize something that is a mathematical equation, this may be the issue for your misunderstanding of the theory. When a term such as 'absolute' or 'infinite' is given its not always so literally taken as you are putting it. Its numbers and equations remember? Infinity or absolute is just the predicted answer when the equation breaksdown or things get too small to measure. At least this is my understanding of it, if im mistaken im sure I'll be corrected with all the nerds on this site Edited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

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All great truths begin as blasphemies

I wouldn't worry about this, we're still well within what can be explained if my previous post was understandable. This stuff I find far easier to explain than black holes and general relativity. I'll get to color in a moment. Conservation of spin is basically also derived from symmetry under rotations. If your working with classical systems symmetry under rotations implies conservation of angular momentum only. However with a quantum system symmetry under rotations implies conservation of angular momentum and spin. Basically it's the same symmetry but QM adds an extra quantity. You essentially have it.
Electromagnetic field -> Photon
Higgs field -> Higgs boson
Dirac field -> Electron. Everytime you demand that a matter field like the dirac(electron) field, be symmetric under some local symmetry, you instantly get a new force field.
How it works is that you start with the equations for the matter field on its own and then try to make the equations symmetric under the local symmetry of your choice. If you go through the maths, you will see that the only way to do this is to introduce a new field, which is a force field, like the gluon field. This process is far more natural than I'm making it sound, the field just appears automatically.*The point of this is that you know have a mathematical theorem:
Local symmetry = New force.
So physicists just started trying out local symmetries and looking at the forces they implied, to see if any of the forces were the strong nuclear force. Basically the appropriate local symmetry was multiplication by a 3x3 complex number matrix as I mentioned.By the way this study of the forces implied by local symmetries is called Yang-Mills theory. For the electroweak force the appropriate local symmetry is, without getting to technical, multiplication by a 2x2 complex number matrix.Now here is another fact. It will seem like word salad at first. If a local symmetry implies the existence of a force, the corresponding global symmetry implies conservation of the charge associated with that force.A simple example is electromagnetism. The electromagnetic fields existence is implied by local symmetry under multiplication by a complex number. Electric charge is conserved due to global symmetry under multiplication by a complex number.The strong nuclear fields existence is implied by local symmetry under multiplication by a 3x3 complex number matrix. Color charge is conserved due to global symmetry under multiplication by a 3x3 complex number matrix.*In fact it's much more mathematically natural than even physicists understood at first.Edited by Son Goku, : Small addition.

"The Second Creation" by Crease and Mann. It is honestly the only book that goes through this stuff intelligently without mathematics. Also it's a great read. If you undertand the buzzwords, like Yang-Mills as I have explained them above, you'll get even more out of it.I should correct a slight error in my previous post. The study of the forces implied by local symmetry is called gauge theory. When the local symmetry is a nice complex matix symmetry, we call it Yang-Mills theory.

Many assume that black holes are the end of matter. Not so. Black holes eventually decay when they have no more matter to consume. There is exciting thinking going on that includes black holes as a critical component of a cyclical regeneration of the universe.

Would that be Rob Mann?