Explaining how the Higgs fields gives particles mass [closed]

Question

Physicists say the Higgs Field is like syrup and slows particles down from the speed of light. Wouldn’t it be easier and more correct to say there are no particles, just fields, and the strength of the coupling of the electron, photon, quark etc. fields with the Higgs field determines their speed. This variation in speed has the same effect as inertial mass and due to the equivalence principle is the same as gravitational mass?

Answer 1

For people with a limited background in physics, the distinction between fields and particles isn't an easy thing to grasp. Even some of my colleagues (I'm a physics teacher) have a hard time, having never studied QFT.

When I try to explain this to a non-specialist audience with enough time, I do start with explaining the difference between the field and the particle with the following, heavily simplified vision:

• There's one field for each type of particle.
• Those fields are constantly present everywhere (like the Force, if there are Star Wars fans in the audience!)
• Sometimes those fields vibrate in space-time, which generates particles.
• The Higgs field is what other particles interact with to get mass, and since it's everywhere all the time, no particle can escape it.
• The Higgs particle is very difficult to produce, which explains why we had a hard time doing it. And without this particle, we had no direct proof that the field even exists, so the whole Higgs thing was just an assumption until about ten years ago.

That's not the sort of explanation that you can unleash on any audience, so sometimes it's easier to just say "the Higgs" and sweep all this dust under the rug.

As for your last question, I have no idea. As far as I know, there's no known well-established connection between QFT and general relativity, so I never saw anything that links mass acquired by the Higgs mechanism to gravitational mass.