I have a question that I've asked before elsewhere and never really gotten an answer... How does the Higgs boson supposedly instill other particles with mass?
Well, it's something on the frontier of science right now, so a good discription is lacking. And it may very well be wrong, but its the best idea so far. This is another reason I like the well understood stuff; it can be explained plainly. However I will try: First, think about something without mass. Any particle with no mass moves at the speed of light. The Higgs bosons are attracted to this particle. A particle that is more massive is simply more attractive to the Higgs. If you can imagine alot of higgs particles appearing in all directions and falling into the particle, its easy to imagine it slowing down the particle. This makes it appear to have mass. The photon and the gluon are the only observed particles theorized to not interact with this particle, which is why they appear to have no mass.
To go into more detail, it is supposed that there is a Higgs field permeating throughout space that has a minimum value higher than zero, unlike electricity (if theres no charge, there is no field). The Higgs boson is a particle of that field, analogous to the photon (also a boson) being a particle of the electomagnetic field. Once again, the fundamental interaction is tied up in virtual particles, this time of this Higgs boson. The virtual pairs are what are attracted to the particle. The net effect, since it is equal in all directions, is something like compression. However, higgs bosons themselves have mass. This has the net effect of trying to keep something going at a constant speed, also known as inertia.
Now, to clarify, not 1 higgs field works for all the particles. I think theres something like 5 higgs fields, each with its own boson. Also, the Higgs is supposed to be very massive. And massive = unstable, so in the natural world higgs bosons do not exists naturally. Virtual Higgs? yes. Real? no. Thats why it takes crazy powerful accelerators to concentrate enough power to make them temporarily appear.
On your doubt until there is evidence point, one thing that cracks me up in conversations with intellectuals is they adopt the opposite view which is valid for experimenters but not for contemplation. I mean the method of setting aside and ignoring experiences for which they can develop no theories. If I can not come up with a self-satisfying explanation or a testable method to examine an experience, then I will simply pretend it didn't happen.
I'm sure dimensions have properties--we just have almost no idea what they all are and specifically how they might work.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. To be clear, creativity and new ideas are good, they simply should not be trusted until they have shown themselves true. For example, you can imagine the planets being moved around the sun by little angels with wings. You shouldn't trust that is the way it works until you either (A) see an angel, beating its wings and moving the planet, (B ) have inferred something 'angel-like' uses a 'wing-like' mechanisim to move the planet due to possibly vortices cause by 'wing-like' movement, etc (C) have several other theories proven via A/B which rely on angels with wings being able to move planets, (D) another method which satisfactoraly explains planetary motion is shown to be mathematically equivilent in every detail to angels beating their wings, causing planetary motion. This might seem like a silly and extreme example, but it was a legitimate theory at one point. And in alot of ways, the true question here is still not answered. We have simply re-formed the question from "What makes the planets orbit the sun?" to "What causes gravity?" to "What causes spacetime-energy coupling?"
I cannot understand how someone can think something is true without evidence/proof. Sure, there are theorists who envision new things. But they never think its true. They bombard it mentally with things to see what it does. If it holds up, alright. If it doesnt, back to the drawing board. Stuff on the edge of science needs feedback from the latest experiments to bombard it in this way. If you cant do either of those, you're idea is simply a mathematical construct, which is not to say it isn't useful.