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Gravity, Newton, Einstein, and The Urantia Book.
"The increase of mass in matter is equal to the increase of energy divided by the square of the velocity of light. In a dynamic sense the work which resting matter can perform is equal to the energy expended in bringing its parts together from Paradise minus the resistance of the forces overcome in transit and the attraction exerted by the parts of matter on one another." (474)
Regardless of whether one labels the above statement from The Urantia Book as metaphysical nonsense, it remains a fact that, in 1935, few human beings were equipped with the necessary knowledge to write such "nonsense." The statement indicates that the authors (the Revelators) were familiar with Einstein's relativity theories. Nevertheless, in the book they persisted in referring to Newtonian concepts such as the "pull" of material gravity. For example--a body of large mass may exert sufficient gravity pull on a lesser body to start disruptive tidal convulsions in that body. (170) They even state the Newtonian gravitational law that the force acting between two bodies is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance separating them, but add the proviso that this law may be modified by intervening space forces such as anti-gravity. (482)
Does this mean that the Revelators are refuting Einstein's proposal that the supposed attractive force of gravity merely reflects the curvature of space-time and that inertia and gravity are indistinguishable? Or are the Revelators doing what so many physicists do in practice--using the Newtonian concepts as an adequate simplification in many instances, such as, for example, for placing a satellite in orbit around the earth?
The Urantia Book states that energy, as light or in other forms, traverses space in straight lines except as acted upon by superior forces and in obedience to the linear gravity pull inherent in material mass. (461) It also states that gravity-responding energy is the ancestor of all universe matter (470), and that no measurable linear gravity pull is exerted on free, unattached, and uncharged electronic energy particles. (476) Would that last statement indicate that a neutron star would exert no gravitational effects?
A recently publicized theory appears to be consistent with all of these statements in the book, as well as being in line with Newtonian gravitational concepts rather the curved space-time postulates of Einstein's relativity. It proposes that there is no such thing as mass, only electric charge and energy which together create the illusion of mass. The physical universe is made up of massless electric charges immersed in a vast, energetic, all-pervasive electromagnetic field. The interaction of those charges and the electromagnetic field creates the appearance of mass.
Modern physics recognizes an electromagnetic force and a weak force involved in radioactive decay. These two forces have been shown to be manifestations of a single force, appropriately named the electroweak force. The hope of modern physics is that a way will be found to unite this force with the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together to give a unified field theory. Until now, gravity has resisted all attempts at unification with these other fundamental forces. If the new view is correct, gravity would not need to be separately unified. Just as mass would arise from the electromagnetic force, so would gravity.
Early in this century, Lorentz, Poincare, and Abraham suggested that inertial mass might arise from an effect, the electrostatic self-energy, through the equation E=mc2. However, the theoretical mass derived from their equation was orders of magnitude larger than observed mass. The more recent ideas suggest inertia is a property arising out of an all-pervasive electromagnetic field called the zero-point field (ZPF). This field is held to exist in a vacuum--even at the temperature of absolute zero. It can be thought of as a sea of electromagnetic radiation that is both uniform and isotropic (the same in all directions). It differs from the cosmic microwave background radiation in that the energy of ZPF rises sharply with the frequency of the radiation---in fact, is proportional to the cube of the frequency. There are two differing views as to its origin, one via orthodox concepts of quantum theory, the other from an updated concept termed stochastic electrodynamics proposed earlier by Einstein, Planck, Nernst, Hopf, and Stern.
In contrast to the 19th century concept of "ether," ZPF has the property of being Lorentz invariant and is only detectable when a body is accelerated through space. In the mid 70's, Paul Davies and William Unruh showed that, as a moving observer accelerates through the ZPF, the ZPF spectrum becomes distorted. A recent analysis showed that when an electromagnetically interacting particle is accelerated through the ZPF, a force is exerted on the charge in direct proportion to the acceleration but acts in the opposite direction. In other words, the charge experiences an electromagnetic force as resistance to acceleration. This resistance is interpreted as the very inertia that Newton regarded as an innate property of matter. Hence, in Newton's second law, F=ma, the term 'm' simply becomes the coupling constant between acceleration and an external electromagnetic force. Thus Newton's second law can be derived from the laws of electrodynamics provided one assumes an underlying zero-point field.
From this new viewpoint what we formerly called mass, having the property of inertia,
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