There are a lot of different ways particles can have mass without the Higgs field existing. In order to verify our theory for how particles get mass (and more importantly how electroweak symmetry is broken), we need to observe the Higgs boson. It’s as simple as that. We are just verifying a prediction of the theory.
It’s the weak force that is mediated by the Ws and Z.
The strong force is mediated by gluons and holds quarks together to make hadrons (e.g. protons and neutrons, but also some more exotic particles)
The residual strong force holds protons and neutrons together to make nuclei. It can be thought of as being mediated by the exchange of pions.
The weak interaction is responsible for radioactive decay. Because it’s mediating particles (the aforementioned Ws and Z) are so massive, it is crazy-short-range, so it’s hard to think of it even as a force at all – just as an intermediate step between quarks and leptons.
You’re very close. The color force, mediated by gluons, bonds quarks together,with the residual force being responsible for the “strong” binding of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. The weak force (mediated by the W and Z bosons) changes the flavor of quarks, resulting in (for example) the decay of a free neutron into proton, electron and antineutrino.
Good layman article on on what the universe would look like without the Higgs field here. Which covers why we would expect there to be one even if we haven’t seen it. (If fact, every article on that site is pretty much gold).
I just want to say thank you to the one who claims to not be the Batman as well as his knowledgeable retinue.
Thank you. 
Just please keep in mind that that article is discussing a scenario in which we take the Standard Model and turn the Higgs field off. It’s not implying that without the Higgs field there are no other possible mechanisms for giving particles the masses they have.
Thanks. I’m bookmarking that for leisurely perusal.
Nitpick: There is no such thing as “hadronness”, since hadrons can be made up of quarks, antiquarks, or any mixture. A neutral pion (which is a hadron), for instance, decays into two photons (which are not hadrons). What is conserved is baryon number. Baryons are a subset of hadrons which include protons and neutrons, and are each made of three quarks (or three antiquarks for an antibaryon).
And the Higgs boson particle itself doesn’t give particles mass; rather, the particle (which usually doesn’t exist) is a manifestation of the Higgs field (which does always exist), which also gives particles mass. And note that the Higgs mechanism is only responsible for the masses of fundamental particles, and maybe not even all of them (neutrinos might get their mass from a different mechanism). Most of the mass of familiar objects does not, however, come from the masses of fundamental particles: The quarks and electrons in your body presumably get their mass from the Higgs mechanism, but most of the mass in your body comes not from the quarks themselves, but from the binding energy between the quarks.
Thanks to all. I’ve learned that a particle is stable if there is no lower mass something or other it can move to, so I infer that heavier particles are more likely to be unstable, and thus harder to detect. And that the Higgs Boson doesn’t, or hasn’t since the first seconds of the Big Bang, generally exist in nature. I already understood that its importance was as a confirmation of the General Theory. For a physics lay guy, I’m feeling pretty good. (If these conclusion are correct, of course!)
Oh, and sorry for the “Higg’s” business.
Can someone elaborate on this? I still don’t get how a field doesn’t need a particle to exist. I thought that was a specific feature of the particle-wave duality–that every field had a particle/wave that it must interact with.
In fact, I was always under the impression that the Higgs field was everything in the universe reacting with rather rare Higgs bosons that spontaneously appear and disappear.
That’s not really what wave-particle duality says. Wave-particle duality is describing the fact that in some ways an electron (etc) acts like a wave. In other ways it acts like a particle. Here “wave” does not mean “field.” In quantum mechanics, particles are described by probability amplitudes, which act like waves until a measurement is made. A “field” is different. Classically, a field is like the surface of a trampoline. In quantum field theory, the fundamental objects are “fields” which we apply quantum mechanics to. Particles are vibrations of these fields. Each field has a type of vibration that looks like a particle. The electron field has a vibration that looks like an electron. The electromagnetic field has a vibration that looks like a photon. The Higgs field has a vibration that looks like a Higgs boson. In our framework for calculating things, the way vibrations of fields interact with other fields (as well as with themselves) is described by the exchange of vibrations. These vibrations are called “virtual particles” when the vibrations are so messy they don’t look like the normal vibrations of a “calm” field. Anyways, all massive particles are constantly interacting with the Higgs field, which we mathematically describe as exchanging virtual Higgs bosons with the Higgs field. This is just a mathematical shorthand for the fact that vibrations are being exchanged. But if we give it enough energy, the Higgs field itself can vibrate enough that a real Higgs boson is produced, which just means that there is a particular vibration in the Higgs field, vibrating a short time, and then decaying into vibrations of other fields.
The Higgs field is everywhere in the universe, and any particles that have mass interact with it, by exchanging vibrations with it. Usually the Higgs field itself doesn’t vibrate in a stable pattern for very long. With enough energy produced in a collision at a particle accelerator, we can produce an honest “Higgs particle” vibration of the Higgs field, which vibrates stably for a short time before decaying. What we can observe are the things it decays into. This allows us to study some of its properties.
I found an interesting video on the Higgs boson, explained by cartoon. I was going to start a new thread, but looked to see if it had been posted yet, and found this thread. Since it isn’t too old, I figured this was a good a place to post it as any. This is an interview with a physicist at CERN looking for the Higgs boson.
To summarize a few points related to this thread, the Higgs boson is hard to detect because in decays almost instantaneously into decay products. But the real kicker is that it’s like slamming two more massive particles together in a box where you can’t see what is happening, then looking at the results that come out of the box. What comes out of the box is decay products, not the Higgs boson itself. So you won’t ever see the boson, just the decay products.
So the trick is to try to look at all the various kinds of collisions that might produce a Higgs boson, and look at the decay products, and see if they are consistent. Combine lots of lines of research.
It also suggests that mass is like charge, it’s an intrinsic property of a particle. Different particles have different intrinsic properties which control how they react to the “mass” field, i.e. the Higgs field, in the same way that different particles have different intrinsic properties which control how they react to the electric field, i.e. charge.
It’s an interesting video. Created by something called PHD comics.
I’d seen the PhD Comics video, and it’s just a rehash of all the usual “layman’s explanations” that are, unfortunately, wrong. You see a lot of this sort of thing: The particle physicists actually working on the problem think about it entirely mathematically, and many of them aren’t good at explaining it in words, so they just re-use the wordy explanations they’ve heard, without stopping to think whether they actually correspond with what the math’s saying.
Could you elaborate?
Well, the biggest problem is that the Higgs mechanism isn’t related to all or even most of the mass of everyday objects. And the bit about mass resisting motion is positively Aristotelian: Mass doesn’t resist motion at all; it resists change in motion, which a model of Higgs-field-as-viscous-fluid can’t account for at all.
I think you have to make some allowances for this kind of thing. For an 8 minutes youtube video for a popular audience, I thought it was actually pretty good.
It isn’t? That’s certainly not the first time I have heard that claim. Here’s from the article that started this thread:
Where are they wrong?
Okay, I’ll buy that one.
During World War II the bo’s’n aboard the USS Higgs was a very large man, over two metres (6’7") tall and overweight. Despite his size, he was very elusive and hard to find, lurking in places where no one could locate him. Part of the reason for this was that he was positively terrible at unarmed combat of any sort, be it a fist fight or martial arts. In short, he was a WIMP.
As it turned out, he was a laicized Catholic priest, and when the good ship Higgs went to sea without a padre on board, he considered the conditions under which he was free to act had been met, and gave his shipmates Mass.
He gave his life during a firefight with a stronger IJN force, intervening to defend some native Kaons and Pions as well as his shipmate “Newt” Neutron (Jimmy’s grandfather). Those killed during this fight were interred on Vella Lavella in a field bought from the brothers Lyuigi and Mario Forbush which has ever since been known locally as the Higgs field.
But whenever you see the mist rising from a pond, or sunlight beating on a golden beach, or watch the distant stars in a crisp night sky, you can sense his presence with you. Or not – but that’s a matter for Great Debates; after all, it is the “God particle.”
Nope. According to Leon Lederman, the guy who wrote the damn book with that title, it’s the goddamn particle.
The rest is brilliance. 
The Higgs mechanism is responsible for the mass of all (or at least, most: Neutrinos might be an exception) of the elementary particles (for instance, electrons and quarks). But the mass of, say, a proton is significantly higher than the sum of the masses of its quarks: Most of the mass comes from the binding energy between the quarks, and that is not related to the Higgs mechanism. In turn, since the matter we’re familiar with gets the vast majority of its mass from protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons get the vast majority of their mass from their binding energies, it follows that most of the mass we’re familiar with is non-Higgs.