In 1665, just before Newton’s work with light and prisms, the Italian Physicist Francesco Maria Grimaldi discovered the diffraction of light and said that light was behaving like a wave. In 1678 Dutch Physicist Christian Huygens established the wave nature of light. So, for around 200 years light was known to be a wave and the knowledge base at the time was that waves could only travel through some kind of medium like the waves on water. However, it was also known that light travelled through the vacuum of space, so the scientists of the day believed that there was a medium throughout the universe that light could travel through that scientist could not see or find.
The theoritical medium throughout the universe that light was using to travel as a wave was known as the Luminiferous Aether. The long story made short, in 1887 physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley performed the Michelson - Morley Experiment in an attempt to locate and/or “see” the Aether. The experiment failed and is considered the first step toward showing that the Aether did not exist. In other words, before the Michelson – Morley experiment all of space in the universe was considered to be filled with an invisible medium that allowed light to travel throughout the expanse of the universe. We now know and clearly understand through experiments that light waves, or any electromagnetic waves, do not need a medium of any kind to travel through space or anywhere else.
Fast forward to today where 21st century quantum physics has established the theory of “fields” that permeate all of space. These fields throughout space are associated with all of the known particles and they are in essence energy fields for the particles. Whenever interactions among particles are taking place these fields can kick in, or take away, energy to an interaction whenever it may be necessary. The process of energy exchange between a particle and its field is accomplished through virtual particles. These virtual particles pop out of the field add or remove energy as needed and then pop back into the energy fields all faster than the blink of an eye. The existence or life span of these virtual particles is so fast that they have never been seen in an experiments or particle collisions. Rather, they are theorized out of particle collisions to account for all of the collision energy. Out of all of the fields existing through space, the most important of these fields is the theorized “Non-Zero Higgs Field” and its associated particle the Higgs Boson.
The non-zero Higgs Field is in essence responsible for the Higgs Boson, which is a very special “force” carrying particle because without the Higgs Boson and its associated non-zero Higgs field there would be no mass in the universe and the universe as we know it would not exist. It should be noted that when I talk about “particle(s)” I am talking about the particles of the “Standard Model.”
In 1964 Belgium’s Francois Englert and Britain’s Peter Higgs independently theorized a subatomic particle that was an integral part of what ultimately became the Standard Model. This particle was later named the Higgs Boson, and along with this new particle comes the new Higgs field. The Higgs Boson was “discovered” in 2012 in a high energy particle collision. Based on current theories, the discovery of the Higgs Boson implies the existence of the Higgs Field.
The science of the time accepted that the theorized Luminiferous Aether had to be there throughout all of space in order for light to propagate even though the Aether was never seen. Today’s science theorizes fields, in particular the non-zero Higgs field, even though it has never been seen. The Higgs Boson and its theorized associated field throughout all of space are necessary for particles to have mass thus allowing matter to exist so the universe we live in can exist. When we look at the similarities of the Luminiferous Aether and light waves with the non-zero Higgs Field and its necessity for mass/matter, it’s difficult not to wonder if physics history is repeating itself. Given that the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field must exist throughout all of space for mass/matter, just like the Luminiferous Aether had to for light waves, one has to wonder if it will be 200 years before science recognizes that the acceptance of this theory is also a mistake?
The Higgs Aether, also known as the Higgs Field, the 21st century equivalent of the the 17th century Luminiferous Aether.
