Mark Ludwigson wrote in panentheism:

I read in a couple places how the Higgs field would only explain mass
in a few particles, and we would still need more theories and tests
for possible origins of mass and inertia. A bit disappointing...

I ran across the zero point field idea, which I recall Mac mentioning
in reference to Dark Matter. The ZPE produces a casimir effect which
has evidence on the nanoscale. Some think it is the cause of the
cosmological constant, but the math doesnt work out, so I've read. It
sounds promising and I hope more progress is made in determining the
truth of it.

From my Physics book:

Zero-point energy E.=0.5*h*v, which is the lowest value the energy of
the oscillator can have. This value is called the zero-point energy
because a harmonic oscillator in equilibrium with its surroundings
would approach an energy of E=E. and not E=0 as the temperature
approaches 0K.

Below is some good background from calphysics website:
 
Hi Mark!
 
Your post addresses the fundamental nature of mass.
 
I have highlighted particularly pertinent sections in your posted reference following.
Imo, your last comment is not applicable, provided the basic structure of string theory (still largely considered to be spacetime background dependent, i.e. metric).
 
Recall that of the four fundamental interactions, only the weak interactions carries inertia. The electromagnetic 'virtual' photon and gravity's graviton and the strong nuclear interaction gluon are all massless.
 
It has for long be known, that the supersymmetry of any 'unified' particle gauge theory requires initial masslessness.
 
So the question is from where the Higgs Field derives its mass to break the supersymmetry of a massless gauge field.

 
The issue with electroweak theory is that it is the weak vector gauge bosons, called Wminus for matter and Wplus for antimatter and Znought for uncharged particle interactions (termed currents); which are postulated to 'draw'  the initial inertial mass from the Higgs Field.
 
For example the top-antiquark system discovered by Fermilab in about 1995  decays into Wplus-Wminus pairings with energy excesses say in bottonium  products (of the next quarksystem in energy).
The easiest Higgs Field models of course postulate then some form of bifurcation of the Higgs Boson into say the massinducers of the W's (the Znoughts decay into neutrino-antineutrino couplings associated with quark-antiquark eigenstates).
 
One easy way is to postulate the Planck-String or Planck-Boson to form a kind of supertemplate, containing a substructure allowing both bosons and fermions to emerge from it.
 
Say a Planck-Boson, which is massless carries a 'gauge substructure' from which all of the known and tabulated elementary particles can derive from. Iow all quark- and lepton configurations must be able to be derived from this blueprint.
 
This automatically engages electrodynamics as stated in your reference; because one is required to look for a prior masslessness, say in a superphotonic eigenstate. And this indeed must define the ZPE , albeit not as a metric background, but as discrete or quantised (say holographic) eigenstate.
This selfstate would however be modelled as a wave- or continuous background in the measurement physics; the ZPE eigenstates formiong the holographioc building blocks as the Planck-Oscillator potentials E=0.5 hf of the superphotonic eigenstate.
 
The accelerations you mentioned are fundamentally reducible to the timedifferential of frequency as df/dt. This of course is metric independent as the radial component can vary as a scalefactor in say angular acceleration. From this derives the quantum spin as quantised Heisenberg constant and so on.
The basic (relativistic) Newtonian law (which is  used statistically in QED) F=ma so has two components for the acceleration, one linear-classical and the other quantum-angular.
 
For example it is a wellknown fact, that Lorentz-Contraction of a solid rotating disk only occurs tangentially, but not radially. So spacetime warps relative to a comoving observer on the perimeter, but not to an observer along any radius. (The rulers would not shorten along a radius, but would become warped along any perimeter, resulting in positive curvature).
 
A simple proof is in F=dp/dt, with p=relativistic momentum mv and using m=mo/Sqrt[1-(v/c)^2] and moc^2=hf.
Differentiating mv gives mdv+vdm=(hf/c^2).dv/{Sqrt[1-(v/c)^2]}^3+=(hv/c^2).df/Sqrt[1-(v/c)^2].
 
So F=ma={mo.dv/dt}/Sqrt[1-(v/c)^2]}^3 + {(hv/c^2).df/dt}/Sqrt[1-(v/c)^2]=Flinear +Fangular.
 
 
So Flinear is the ordinary 'Force' which is measured as F=ma in classical and quantum statistical physics.
 
But Fangular is defined by the angular acceleration df/dt and carries a minute coefficient in terms of magnitudes of (h/c^2)~10^-51 and a scale which would be immeasurable for any smaller changes in frequency.
Even if you set the 'wave-group-speed' at c; the coefficient will be h/c~10^-42).
 
So it is no surprise, that the angular extension of Newtonian forcelaws remains unknown or ill-considered by the contemporary establishment.
 
However, at the Big Bang, after the string-epoch had ended to initialise the metric background in the beforesaid 'master blueprint' for the gauges; the masslessness could transform in the equivalence principle through the Higgs Bosonic restmass Induction hf=moc^2 of the superphoton gauge.
 
In short, the string epoch defined certain interaction finestructures, such as electromagnetic alpha and gravitational alpha NOT from preexistent fermions and nucleons like protons and neutrons, BUT from massless Planck-Strings first transforming into magnetic monopoles (Dirac) and subsequently into BIFURCATED Bosons as the Lepton- and Quark precursors.
 
Only after the universe had cooled to about 10^15 Kelvins could a particular Higgs Boson energy of so 298 GeV become particularised and from this split into Wplus and Wminus and quark-antiquark pairings.
 
Lastly, the leptons are true unifiers. The electron family are like nucleon shells or rings around neutrinoic cores in the 'master template'. It is the Atomisation of the Subatomic realm or such - geometrically.
The quarks all derive from the Higgs Induction as couplings between leptonic rings and leptonic kernels with mesonic rings in between for the quark-antiquark modelitis. The unification of all interactions proceeds in the kernel interchanging its eigenstate with the other gauges. So the neutrino, the graviton, the gluon and the gauge photons are in a senmse all the same particle AS the 'master template'.
 
Changing the SU(2) Unitary symmetry of Quantum-Chromodynamics to the SU(3) symmetry, then uses the next particularisation of the 'master template' from the 2x2 to the 2x2x2 quark-matter configurations of nucleons and hyperons and based on the familiar proton and neutron as basic eigenstates.
 
Tony B.
 
 
 
 


*****************
Even if the Higgs field is experimentally discovered, however, that
will still not explain the origin of inertial mass of ordinary
matter. The Higgs field applies only to the electro-weak sector of
the Standard Model. The mass of ordinary matter is overwhelmingly due
to the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms. Protons and
neutrons are comprised of the two lightest quarks: the up and down
quarks. The masses of their constituent quarks (approx. 0.005 and
0.010 GeV/c2 for the up and down quarks respectively) comprise only
about one percent of the masses of the protons and neutrons (0.938
and 0.940 GeV/c2 respectively). The remainder of the mass would have
to be due to the gluon fields and strong interaction energies. The
quark masses, the gluon fields and other strong interaction energies
would not be affected by a Higgs field. The origin of inertial mass
of ordinary matter is thus a wide open question.

SED studies published in the 1990s showed that a massless point-
charge oscillator accelerating through the zero-point field will
experience a Lorentz force (from the magnetic components of the zero-
point fluctuations) that turns out to be directly proportional to
acceleration, allowing the derivation of the fundamental F=ma
relationship of mechanics from electrodynamics. This points to the
electromagnetic quantum vacuum as the origin of forces which appear
as inertial mass. The same result can be derived by considering the
transformation properties of the electromagnetic field when
experienced in an accelerating coordinate system, and in that case
the proper four-vector relativistic equation of motion can be
derived. A recent study showed that such a zero-point field based
mass-generating approach would explain the origin of Einstein's
principle of equivalence. These as yet still speculative concepts
suggest that zero-point energy may be involved in some of the most
fundamental properties of matter. It should be noted that this
unorthodox approach to mass based upon electrodynamics is not taken
very seriously by the mainstream physics community, whose efforts
remain focussed on superstring- and M-theory.