Higgs and mass

[Mr. Pedantic]

So the Higgs boson has (probably) been found, and it's mass is (probably) around 125 GeV. And my understanding is that this particle is responsible for all mass in the universe. My question, then, is this. A proton is just shy of 1 GeV, so how does a proton get its mass derived from the Higgs? For example, the photon is the boson of the EM spectrum, and the smallest unit of light energy that can be transmitted. I understand that photons can have different amounts of energy, but no photon can be atomised to get two smaller units of light energy. So, how does this relate to the Higgs?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I'd highly recommend Leonard Susskinds explanation on youtube, it's a short lecture which goes over enough of the basics to explain the higgs, his other lectures on cosmology and quantum mechanics on youtube are also really good, although highly technical you're probably going to need at least A level physics to understand any of it.

 

[Rikard]

So the Higgs boson has (probably) been found, and it's mass is (probably) around 125 GeV. And my understanding is that this particle is responsible for all mass in the universe.

No quite. It is responsible for the mass of the elementary particles, but most of the known mass of the Universe is actually coming from the energy bound in hadrons, such as nuclei. For example a proton is much heavier than the sum of its constituents (up and down quarks).

My question, then, is this. A proton is just shy of 1 GeV, so how does a proton get its mass derived from the Higgs?

The quarks get their mass from interactions with the Higgs field, but that is a minor part of the proton mass like I said above.

For example, the photon is the boson of the EM spectrum, and the smallest unit of light energy that can be transmitted. I understand that photons can have different amounts of energy, but no photon can be atomised to get two smaller units of light energy. So, how does this relate to the Higgs?

You could think of a photon as a localized quantisation of a wave. A photon has no mass, but is still energetic from that it gains its energy from the frequency of its wave form. Even though massless, a photon still carries momentum and can hence "push" objects it hits. This is one reason why sun light is not too dangerous whereas high energy gamma rays has larger probability to give you cancer. The reason why a high energy photon cannot decay into two other low energy photons is due to conservation of energy and conservation of momentum would be violated due to that it has no mass.