^Yeah, they haven't shown that the Higgs Field exists, but they have (with high probability) shown that the Higg's Boson exists. But where did the Higg's Boson come from? Well... there are many explanations, but our "best" one is from a Higg's field. Is there any other way to test if the Higg's Field exists? Maybe there isn't any direct way, but there must be ways of colaborating evidence to support it's existence...

Can you provide a link to some other explanations for the Higgs boson? That was not my understanding. I know there are other possible explanations for mass that do not involve a Higgs boson or Higgs field, but I do not think I have ever seen a model that proposes a Higgs boson in the absence of a Higgs field.

Yeah, I don't really agree with the notion that the Higgs boson and Higgs field are independent. Quantum field theory basically blurs this notion and what we call particles are "long lived" (in quotes because the time scales involved can be much less than a second) excitations of an underlying quantum field.

God I wish I understood basic science better, I read for hours trying to increase my understanding but nothing goes in.

My understanding is that this thing gives some particles mass but not that is responsible for all of our (humans) mass correct?

Also they say it's 5 sigma but how many test do they run? If they ran 500 million tests and found this then it's not at all surprising right?

I found this youtube and this youtube very helpful in trying to understand this stuff.

I don't claim to completely understand it all but it's very interesting!

It's 5 sigma GIVEN the sample size.

In other words, if there were no Higgs boson, the odds that we would have seen this result anyway are less than one in 3 million.

Still don't get what the hell the Higgs is. All of these descriptions make it seem like the Higgs field is constantly interacting with every particle always. But, to me, interacting means applying force, and particles are not constantly accelerating.

Does the Higgs field give particles gravitational mass or inertial mass? Does it explain the relationship between the two? Does it somehow interact with particles only when they're being acted on by a force?

It only interacts with some particles (not photons for instance.)

My understanding was that Higgs affects inertial mass. Therefore it would affect any moving particle that it interacts with. And all particles are always moving.

But there's a good chance, I'm totally confused.

Uh - the existence of a boson proves that the field exists.. what you said is like saying they've discovered tsunamis but haven't proven there's an ocean yet. Particles are ripples in fields.

In fact the Higgs Field or something like it has been known to exist since the 1930s (its vacuum expectation value was found by Fermi from measuring the strength of weak interactions). Discovering the boson is more of a confirmation that the way we thought the Higgs Field interacts with the other fields is right.

That's basically correct , if you replace 'every particle' with "massive particles". The electromagnetic field and the Higgs field don't interact directly for example.

The Higgs field is "always on". All of the other known fields are "off" except when ripples are passing through, e.g. a quark is not affected by the electromagnetic field if there are no photons in the vicinity.

The "massive particles" can be thought of as massless particles (which is what they were in the early days of the universe before the Higgs field turned on), which continually bump into the Higgs field, effectively slowing down their progress. The top quark bumps 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times per second (lighter particles bump less often).

Put another way, the mass of an elementary particle is the energy it picks up from all these Higgs field bumpings. (The Higgs field has energy everywhere, 246 GeV).

Some links:
Higgs FAQ 1.0
What it was like before the Higgs field turned on
A diagrammatic hint of masses from the Higgs

Inertial mass. But general relativity says that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same (i.e. gravity pulls on the object's energy), and there are no observations that conflict with general relativity.

Thanks!

What does this interaction do?

The metaphor seems to suggest that the particles are slowed down, but of course particles don't continually change velocities (at least not over large timescales where quantum fluctuations average out), and "slowed down" makes no sense without a reference frame (I assume the Higgs field doesn't create a preferred frame...).

How does the top quark interacting with the Higgs field really really often lead to it being harder to push the top quark?

ah ok, I am as much as a layman as most ppl when it comes to this and misinterpreted what the Higg's Boson is. Apologies.