Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by arkain101

I am curious to hear some people's best description of what exactly seems to give 'mass' its mass.

My personal belief is that mass is non-negative scalar property of the known fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, etc) that determines their interaction with each other. As such, I consider it to be similar to charge, except that it can’t have a negative value, and it’s subject to the statistics of Special Relativity

What or how is it that mass has inertia. What reason exactly does it want to be as it is and fire back an equal force of anything that forces upon it?

I believe that particles are fully described by their quantum wave functions. Therefore, when, for example, 2 electrons interact via the exchange of quanta of magnetic force (photons), the functions describing these photons are complimentary – of all the potential photons that could emitted and absorbed by each electron, only a range determined by their interaction with particles outside of their 2-particle system (AKA “measurement”) according to the Uncertainty Principle have a non-zero probability of existing, and the photons exchanged must be identical in energy and opposite in direction.

Here are more of my beliefs about mass, beyond the original questions

• I believe that particles with non-zero mass interact via an as yet undiscovered boson, commonly termed the graviton.
• I fail to see a role for the proposed Higgs boson in creating inertia – I don’t understand and affirm, nor understand and reject its roll as proposed by current theory, but rather don’t understand the theory - leading me to suspect that my understanding of mass and inertial are inadequately informed.

I’m not currently able to work competently within the formalism of the terms I’ve used above, a personal – though, I hope, not insurmountable - technical failing.

Despite my lack of formal analytic ability and theoretical understanding, I’m suspect with near certainty that mass is a real, fundamental property, that will find expression in any successful “Theory of Everything” or “Grand Unified Theory”.