Perhaps no field of human endeavor relies more on metaphor than science. The Big Bang. Atomic “orbits.” Evolution—is it a ladder, a tree, or a bush?
This is what happens when language is called upon to describe something whose origins lie elsewhere—in physical realms either too vast or too small for our everyday perception, in discoveries driven by math and measurements.
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In the case of physics, the only accurate way to represent the ideas or understand them "on their own" is through mathematics - very advanced mathematics. The math of particle physics doesn't just represent the ideas - it is the ideas. As a math-free physics fan, I've been reading popular physics books for years, and metaphor is the only approach there is for average people like me. But every author uses different metaphors in every book, and the varying approaches help me see it differently and grasp it better each time a new metaphor is introduced. To use a metaphor so overused it should be banned, each different approach allows the blindfolded reader to "see" a different part of the elephant. But the only way to take off the blindfold is to learn the math - and that is not possible for anyone not dedicated to a post-graduate career in academia. So we owe a great debt to those who can grasp the true ideas and take the time to try to convey them to us by analogy in words. Of course, we're paying for the development of these ideas, so actually they kind of owe us...