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To: Physicist
Is there an "Anti-Higgs" with negative mass?
21 posted on 08/18/2002 12:08:14 AM PDT by Don Joe
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To: Don Joe
Is there an "Anti-Higgs" with negative mass?

No and yes.

First, there is no such thing as negative mass. Antiparticles have exactly the same mass as their matter counterparts. (E=mc², remember, so the fact that matter and antimatter release nonzero energy when they annihilate tells you that their masses can't cancel.)

Now, is there an anti-Higgs? Yes, and it's the Higgs boson! The fundamental bosons--such as the photon--are "self-conjugate", meaning that they are their own anti-particles. [Geek alert: some bosons, such as the W, carry charge, and are not exactly self-conjugate, but both of the charge states are of equal rank: the W+ and the W- have equal claims on being the "matter" particle.]

Personally, I don't think of these "gauge bosons" as matter at all, never mind the fact that some of them are quite massive! I think of them as particles of force. The universe is composed of matter and force, and both are quantized into particles.

In the religious spirit of the threads title, I submit that quarks and leptons are the "nouns" of God's Word, while the gauge bosons are the verbs.

24 posted on 08/18/2002 5:00:18 AM PDT by Physicist
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