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LETTER OF THE MONTH
What flipped the switch to turn the Higgs field on?
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY IMAGES
You sure about all that?
In ‘How the Universe Will End’ (June, p62) Alastair Gunn mentions the ‘Big Slurp’, which sounds like a just-so story. Is it based on sound theory or just speculation? He states that at the moment of the Big Bang, the Higgs field didn’t operate as the Universe was too hot and dense. Why? At that instant, radiation dominated and consisted of high-energy photons, which are massless so don’t interact with the Higgs field. Is this the basis for stating that it didn’t operate? Then we’re told that the Higgs field instantly flipped on. Again, why? How much of this is just the heated imagination of theorists?