What Is Mass?

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Despite reading all the popular accounts of the Higgs field that I can find, I'm afraid I still don't quite understand how it adds mass to the affected particles. But here's a way of thinking about it might be a little bit different than what we normally think. What is mass, after all? In modern physics, all of these particles come from fields. It's not just the Higgs boson that is a field. The electron and quarks are fields. And they're vibrations have different kinds of energy associated with them.

Welcome to the October 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

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