There's a lot more to it than "they just do" we just don't know yet because there's actually a lot we don't understand about the fundamental properties of, well, fundamental particles.

See the higgs boson as for why matter has mass. We used to say "inertia is a property of matter" but some clever fucks figured out why and then proved it.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I would argue that the Higgs mechanism is just that: A mechanism for explaining where mass comes from. You could explain charge in a similar way by saying "because the particles are made of a certain amount of up or down quarks".

Neither of these explanations answer the underlying question "but why does the Higgs mechanism give things mass?" or "but why do up/down quarks give things charge?".

My point is that, at some stage, you get to the point of "the Higgs boson has mass because it's an intrinsic property of the Higgs boson", which is tantamount to "they just do".

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Mass & gravity are still way easier to understand on a fundamental level, especially since everything has a certain amount of mass and thus affects and is affected by gravity. It's a much simpler concept. ("Natural") magnetism is (so far) very material specific and I don't think I've seen a good explanation as to why exactly. Magnets certainly behave very differently than other materials and that causes this mysticism in people when they think about magnets. Given the still ongoing research into magnetism and related things like superconductivity there's certainly a lot still to learn.