The few times I’ve seen an answer to this question, it is through an analogy that reminds me of explaining what time is. So how does a Higgs Field give particles mass and why are some particles massless despite the Higgs Field?
This message board has many references to this. Try this one: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=726703&highlight=Higgs+Field
None of those posts answered my question.
First of all, the analogy you usually hear is completely useless. You’re right to forget about it. Mass doesn’t act that way.
Second, the Higgs field isn’t responsible for all mass, nor even for the majority of it: Most of the mass we’re familiar with is ultimately due to the binding energy of protons and neutrons. The mass of the individual quarks, and of electrons (which does come from Higgs), is relatively insignificant. Neutrinos might get their mass from Higgs, or they might get it from something unrelated called the Majorana mechanism: Last I heard, the jury was still out on that one.
We can interpret the weak interaction as arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry. The corresponding Goldstone bosons would be massless, though, whereas the W and Z bosons do have nonzero mass (as inferred, for example, from the variation of the interaction with distance). The Higgs mechanism explains how those gauge bosons acquire mass. That’s about as simple as an explanation can get without digressing into misleading and pointless analogies or quantum woo.
I think the prior thread you’re looking for is this one, which quotes from a Yahoo News article in which Yahoo’s Teeming Millions explain everything.
The Higgs Boson walks into a church. The priest says we don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here. The Higgs Boson says but without me how can you have mass?