Mass and Machian General Relativity

Abstract

Mach's Principle is usually taken to mean that the mass of a particle as measured locally is determined in some way by the other matter in the universe. This is difficult to formalize in 4D,but is feasible in 5D if the scalar potential of non-compactified Kaluza-Klein theory is interpreted as an inertial field. We therefore review 5D space-time-matter theory, but take the local particle mass to be defined by the integral of a global scalar field. This approach smoothly embeds general relativity, and leads to several new effects which can be tested.