Could symmetry breaking change the speed of light?

[Daecon]

I've been reading articles on Wikipedia and I was curious as to whether it's hypothetically possible for the electroweak force to have had a different propagation speed to standard electromagnetism, and that when the two forces separated, their speeds also changed?

[MigL]

Electroweak mediating particles were all massless like the photon, and so, moved at c.

The symmetry break, through the Higgs mechanism, allowed some of these mediating particles ( the W and Z )to acquire mass and so are limited to sub-luminal speeds for the Weak interaction. The photon, mediating EM interactions, on the other hand, remains massless.

This has a big difference in interaction ranges. While EM is not limited, Special Relativity and Heisenberg Uncertainty limit the effective range of the Weak interaction ( mediating particles can only get so far in the time allotted to virtual particles ).

[Daecon]

Ah, I see. So it isn't plausible than the value of c was different, pre-symmetry breaking?

[swansont]

Ah, I see. So it isn't plausible than the value of c was different, pre-symmetry breaking?

That would be the same as saying that c depends on energy.

[Daecon]

So symmetry breaking just changes the properties of the particles, not the fundamental laws, of which c is one of those laws?