Does the Higgs Boson Enforce the CCosmic Speed Limit

[Rhondazvous]

I definitely gotta read this. First, what is QCD? Do you think the discovery of the higgs boson 3 years later wold have influenced his findings?

QCD is Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory how gluons mediate the strong interaction between quarks.

I was just posting it to show that people actually think about such things, the article is not written for general audience and probably pretty incomprehensible to non-experts apart from some of the introduction and conclusion.
I don't think the discovery changed those findingd much. All they had to assume for their hypothetical world is that neither the Higgs field nor an alternative exist.

This brings up something that puzzles me, though it's not related to the op, since we pretty much said all we need to about that, I feel safe following this digression.

I understand that gluons mediate the strong force and W and Z bosons mediate the weak force. But I've read in more than one article that by mediating the electron/neutrino/positron transformations, the W bosons cause nuclear transmutation. How can that be? How can transforming the electrons (weak force) affect the nucleus (strong force)?