oye OL at: SCIENCES PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES «NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1994+ $3.50 STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF SCIENCE Do Attacks from the Academic Left Pose the Threat of Cultural War? by MicHiaki. Ruse Bryonn F=mce2 A First Glimpse of a Universe Without Mass by BERNHARD HAISCH, ALFONSO RUEDA AND H. E, PUTHOFFSCIENCES Novemern Oecewaen 1904 BEYOND E= mc? A first glimpse of @ postmodern physics, in which mass, inertia and gravity arise from underlying electromagnetic processes BY BERNHARD HAISCH, ALFONSO RUCDA ANDO H. E. PUTHOFF [HE MOST FAMOUS OF ALL EQUATIONS MUST | surely be E=me?, In popular culture that relation between energy and mass is vir~ tually synonymous with relativity, and Einstein, its originator, has become a symbol of modern physics, The usual interpretation of the equation i that one kind of fundamental physical thing, mass (i in the equa- tion), can be converted into a quite different kind of fun damental physical ching, energy (E in the equation), and vvice versa; the two quantities are inextricably intertwined, related by the factor ©, the square of che velocity of light The encrgy of the aun, for instance, comes from nuclear fission, in which the nuclei of hydrogen atoms fuse to- gether to become the nuclei of helium atom. In the pre~ ‘ailing view mass is lost in the fusion reaction, and as onc popular astronomy textbook puts it, “The small fraction of mass that disappears in the process is converted into ener gy according to the formula i Recent work by us and others now appears to offer a sadically different insight into the relation E=me?, as well 4s into the very idea of mas itself. To put it simply, the con cept of mass may be neither fandamental nor necessary in physics. In the view we will present, Einstein’ formula is even more significant than physicists have realized. [is ac~ tually a statement about how much energy is required to give the appearance of a certain amount of mass, rather than about the conversion of one fundamental thing, en ergy, inwy another fundamental ching, mas Indeed, if that view is correet, there is no such thing 2s rmass—only electric charge and energy, which together cre~ ate the illasion of mas. The physical universe is made up of rmasless electric charges immersed in a vast, energetic, all- pervasive electromagnetic field. Its the interaction of those charges and the electromagnetic field chat creates the ap- pearance of mass. In other words, the magizine you now hold in your hands is mawles; properly unnlerstood, itis physically nothing more than a collection of electric charges ‘embedded in a universal energetic electromagnetic field and acted on by the field in such a Way a8 f0 make you think che magazine has the property of mas. Its apparent weight and solidity arise from the interactions of charges and field. 26 THE SCIENCES + November/Devember 1994Besides recasting the prevailing view of mass, this idea would address one of the most profound problems of physics, the riddle of how gravity can be unified with the other three fundamental forces of nature. The electromag- neti force and the weak force, which is responsible for m- clear decay, have been showa to be two manifestations of a single force, appropriately called the electroweak “There are tantalizing hints thatthe strong force, which binds nuclei together, will someday be unified with the elec- troweak force. But until now gravity has resisted all attempts at unification. Ifthe new view is correct, however, gravity would not need to be separately unified, just as mass would arise from the electromagnetic force, so would gravity. st Ig MASS? TWO KEY PROPERTIES DE \ X ] 1¢ the concept of the mass of a given amount of matter, namely, its inertia and the gravitation to which the matter gives ri area lari) Lita Albuquerque, It Takes One Thousand Masters Praying to Melt One Heart of Stone, 1988-89 defined by Galileo as the property of matter that keeps an object in uniform motion once given an impetus, until the objects acted upon by some further impetus. Galileo's idea ‘was generalized and quantified by Newton in his Principia, ‘The tendency of an object to remain in uniform motion, and the tendency of the motion to change when impetus is applied, Newton expressed in one compact equation The equation states that the acceleration a, or change of velocity, is proportional to the force F applied, where the constant of proportionality isthe inertial mass ms of the ob- ject in question: thus, F= ma. In other words, inertial offers to being accelerated when itis subjected to a force In Newton's equation of motion, when the application of a force ceater, the acceleration goes to zero, and the ob- {ject remains in uniform motion. Objects are assumed t0 resist acceleration, because that resistance is an innate assis the resistance an object Inertia was | property of matter.