15

Is it only the higgs field that stops me from accelerating up to the speed of light or is there other restriction concerning the increase in mass? In other words if I had a Higgs field shield on my spacecraft could I get close to the speed of light without an increase in mass?

Qmechanic
  • 220,844
Jitter
  • 2,477

1 Answers1

7

Courtesy of the question Bound State of Only Massless Particles? Follows a Time-Like Trajectory? the answer to your question is no.

If you take the example of a glueball formed from two gluons, although the gluons are massless the glueball has a rest mass. In his answer to the above question Ben Crowell argues that the glueball must move on a timelike trajectory i.e. slower than the speed of light. So we have an example of a bound state of massless particles that moves slower than $c$.

So even though removing the Higgs contribution to the mass would render the elementary particles massless, QCD bound states would remain massive and travel on timelike trajectories.

Community
  • 1
John Rennie
  • 367,598