A Slightly different Universe.

[PhantomWolf]

So part of writing is world building, and based on the idea that different Universe can have radically different physics, one of things I have been considering is how a universe would work if physics worked slightly differently to how it is believed to work in our own.

My idea is a universe where there is no Higg's Field, but rather Bosons would interact directly with Space Time by compressing it around them to various degrees.

For example, a Photon would barely compress Space Time at all, thus when it is seen travelling it would travel at the speed of light. Compare to that a Higg's Boson would highly compress the space around it, and so while it still travels at the speed of light through that compressed space, because it is compressed, it seems to travel slower to anyone else watching.

Would this sort of physics work out, and what differences to our Universe would be likely in this other universe? I think that Gravity and mass would still exist to some degree because matter would still "fall" into the compressed space time much like it would in a curved one if I have the idea right.

Anyone was to bend their brains by having some guesses at what it'd be like living there?

 

[Samson]

So part of writing is world building, and based on the idea that different Universe can have radically different physics, one of things I have been considering is how a universe would work if physics worked slightly differently to how it is believed to work in our own.

My idea is a universe where there is no Higg's Field, but rather Bosons would interact directly with Space Time by compressing it around them to various degrees.

For example, a Photon would barely compress Space Time at all, thus when it is seen travelling it would travel at the speed of light. Compare to that a Higg's Boson would highly compress the space around it, and so while it still travels at the speed of light through that compressed space, because it is compressed, it seems to travel slower to anyone else watching.

Would this sort of physics work out, and what differences to our Universe would be likely in this other universe? I think that Gravity and mass would still exist to some degree because matter would still "fall" into the compressed space time much like it would in a curved one if I have the idea right.

Anyone was to bend their brains by having some guesses at what it'd be like living there?

To a photon the whole universe stands stock still.
In this actual universe.
I don't know if that is helpful.

 

[Roboramma]

If your universe has no Higgs Field, then it also has no Higgs Bosons.

As to your idea, it's not really clear to me how it's supposed to work, so I can't really comment on it.

 

[HansMustermann]

For the question in the OP, there actually is a hypothesis that that's how inertial mass actually works in our universe. More or less. Essentially when you accelerate, you always have an event horizon behind you. That's not the hypothesis, that's standard physics. The idea with that hypothesis is that basically your accelerating particle and that event horizon behind it form essentially the plates in a Casimir kinda experiment. You have all wavelengths of virtual particles available in front of you, since it goes all the way to infinity in front, but only up to that event horizon behind you. So essentially you'd have more virtual particles in front of you to push you backwards than behind to push you forward.

As for different laws of physics, you have to basically ask yourself how different.

E.g., one argument by the "divine fine tuning" crowd is basically: what if the ratio of certain constants were different? But can they be different? Because a lot of stuff is just resonances, e.g., in the energy levels that allow heavier nuclei than hydrogen to form, so they can't really be at anything else than integer ratios.

And a lot of other stuff has the value of exactly 1 when you use Planck units. The constant G is 1 in those units, for example. Planck's constant is 1 too. Etc. The funky values with lots of seemingly random decimals are just an artefact of our using some arbitrary units, instead of the universe's natural units, so to speak. So, anyway, is it even possible for them to have any other values? Is it even theoretically possible to fine-tune anything there?

Going on, a lot of quantum properties of the universe are really integers. E.g., pretty much any kind of kind of angular momentum is multiples of Planck's constant.

So a different universe can it even behave any different there, if it's quantized at all? Or conversely can it even have particles at all if it's not quantized? Because all of our particles are really the quanta of various field oscillations.

E.g., you could also come up with a universe without a fixed speed of light, but then how does simultaneity work in that universe. WHAT carries that information?

Etc.

Basically it's not trivial to come up with a different set of physics that makes any sense whatsoever, once you have even a superficial understanding of why our set of rules works that way.

 

[rjh01]

The answer to the question I do not think too many people have thought much about. You could come up with an answer yourself and very few people would know that it would be wrong. One thing I did hear about once is what happens if the uncertainty principle was a lot bigger? As in people would know it. It would make such things as modern computers impossible, but quantum computers easy.

Or in another idea maybe superconductivity could be achieved easily at room temperature.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, there are a lot of questions about how would a universe even work if Planck's constant was bigger. I mean, do mollecules even work the same way, if you think about it?

But, even better, do you still keep that weak force? Because increasing Planck's constant would pretty much exponentially increase the interaction of neutrinos with matter, so you'd have nuclei being smashed to bits left, right and centre.

 

[kedo1981]

Then again, how would we know it was different?