Daecon Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 I've been reading articles on Wikipedia and I was curious as to whether it's hypothetically possible for the electroweak force to have had a different propagation speed to standard electromagnetism, and that when the two forces separated, their speeds also changed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MigL Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 Electroweak mediating particles were all massless like the photon, and so, moved at c. The symmetry break, through the Higgs mechanism, allowed some of these mediating particles ( the W and Z )to acquire mass and so are limited to sub-luminal speeds for the Weak interaction. The photon, mediating EM interactions, on the other hand, remains massless. This has a big difference in interaction ranges. While EM is not limited, Special Relativity and Heisenberg Uncertainty limit the effective range of the Weak interaction ( mediating particles can only get so far in the time allotted to virtual particles ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daecon Posted March 6, 2017 Author Share Posted March 6, 2017 Ah, I see. So it isn't plausible than the value of c was different, pre-symmetry breaking? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 Ah, I see. So it isn't plausible than the value of c was different, pre-symmetry breaking? That would be the same as saying that c depends on energy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daecon Posted March 6, 2017 Author Share Posted March 6, 2017 So symmetry breaking just changes the properties of the particles, not the fundamental laws, of which c is one of those laws? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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