Prior to 10 −11 seconds ATB, the Higgs field fluctuated up and down but had an average value of zero; as with water above 100 degrees Celsius, at such temperatures a Higgs ocean couldn’t form because it was too hot. The ocean would have evaporated immediately. And without a Higgs ocean there was no resistance to particles undergoing accelerated motion (the paparazzi vanished), which implies that all the known particles (electrons, up-quarks, down-quarks, and the rest) had the same mass: zero.
