> Also a countertop swivel chair physicist, my understanding is that Higgs bosons are recruited as virtual particles all the time to bestow other particles their mass.
I think you're mixing up two subtle ideas. One is virtual particles, which as lanza explains, is really a name for a step in a calculation. The other is the idea of vacuum expectation value, or vev.
As another commenter mentioned, a particle is (loosely) like a ripple on a pond. The vev tells you how much water there is, even at rest. With a simple harmonic potential (parabola shaped) the vev is the x-coordinate of the turning point (ie. the minimal energy), which we usually put at zero because of symmetry. However, the 'Mexican hat potential' respects the symmetry but has minima that aren't located at zero radius. The Higgs potential is like that, and so the Higgs has a nonzero vev.
The way the Higgs interacts with fermions implies that the masses are proportional to the Higgs vev.
Rather than it being virtual Higgses, it's more like the particles are swimming in a viscous liquid. Sleek particles aren't bothered and are hardly slowed down at all (these particles have not much mass) and some are not hydrodynamic and have a hard time.
The analogy is imperfect: the viscous soup doesn't provide friction in the way that water does (you can't give your momentum to the vacuum).
> Also a countertop swivel chair physicist, my understanding is that Higgs bosons are recruited as virtual particles all the time to bestow other particles their mass.
I think you're mixing up two subtle ideas. One is virtual particles, which as lanza explains, is really a name for a step in a calculation. The other is the idea of vacuum expectation value, or vev.
As another commenter mentioned, a particle is (loosely) like a ripple on a pond. The vev tells you how much water there is, even at rest. With a simple harmonic potential (parabola shaped) the vev is the x-coordinate of the turning point (ie. the minimal energy), which we usually put at zero because of symmetry. However, the 'Mexican hat potential' respects the symmetry but has minima that aren't located at zero radius. The Higgs potential is like that, and so the Higgs has a nonzero vev.
The way the Higgs interacts with fermions implies that the masses are proportional to the Higgs vev.
Rather than it being virtual Higgses, it's more like the particles are swimming in a viscous liquid. Sleek particles aren't bothered and are hardly slowed down at all (these particles have not much mass) and some are not hydrodynamic and have a hard time.
The analogy is imperfect: the viscous soup doesn't provide friction in the way that water does (you can't give your momentum to the vacuum).