Where does mass come from?

Question

Weight comes from gravity force pulling down, But what about mass? Is it still mystery question that still hasn't been solved?

Answer 1

Mass is an intrisic quality. This is the same as when we say an electron has a charge of -1, a proton of +1, and a down quark of -1/3. You can't exactly say where they come from -- they're intrinsic.

Other intrinsic properties are spin, (electrons are 1/2 [fermion], photons are 0 [boson], protons are 1 [boson]).

If you mean, for example, why does an electron have a mass of 9.11 x10^-31 kg, there's no way to say why it has that value and not something different. That's just an intrinsic property, and we've measured its mass experimentally, and arrived at that accepted value over the years of experimentation. I've done this experiment with Hemholtz coils (technically, we found the ratio of mass to charge and used an accepted value for charge). It was pretty accurate for such a simple setup.

BTW, don't think of there actually being a "gravity force." Physicists just don't like that... gravitational force is weight, or you can say force due to gravity. Gravity is an acceleration. The generalized form, F = GMm/r^2 dictates that F=mg, thus g = GM/r^2, and g is an acceleration by dimensional analysis (checking units).

Answer 2

A mass is the amount of matter,while weight is the pull of gravity acting on a mass.If i take the same amount of mass to the moon,pull of gravity will be different , but the mass did not change.

Answer 3

Mass is simply how many neutrons, electrons and protons are in your object. Protons and neutrons have about the same mass, and electrons have much less.

Gravity is actually taking that mass and applying acceleration on it. If you've ever taken a physics 101 class or something one of the first things you learn is F=MA. That's force (gravity) = mass * acceleration (the pull coming from the earth).

Answer 4

If you mean where did matter come from, that's a cosmology question, and candidate answers include a quantum singularity, intersecting M-branes, and God created it.

If you mean why does matter experience gravitational attraction, we don't know that either. It has been measured to be equal to inertial mass to within one part in 10^12. General relativity speaks of gravity as a warping of spacetime in the presence of mass, but it still doesn't say why it happens.

Answer 5

the amount of matter or particle a body is made of

Answer 6

mass is weight