On 7/25/2014 10:31 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
Bekenstein found that the entropy of a black hole was proportional to its surface area, which is also related to its mass.
Since Newton, we've always assumed that mass is the "source" of gravity, but perhaps we (and Newton) were misled in the pre-digital world.
In general relativity Einstein's equations have source-free solutions, e.g. gravity waves, de Sitter space.
Perhaps gravity (and particularly the space-time curvature) is really "caused" by the information stored on the Bekenstein surface, and the numerical value of the mass (& hence energy) is merely some statistic associated with this information.
Verlinde's ideas of a few years ago are in this direction; I'm not sure where his thinking has led him recently.
Padmanabhan actually preceded Verlinde and has done more with the idea. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.5004.pdf Sakharov originated the idea of gravity as a kind of statistical force. Here's review by Visser http://arxiv.org/abs/grqc/0204062 Brent Meeker