I How does inertia, a property of mass, arise?

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Inertia is a property of mass that manifests during acceleration, as illustrated by everyday experiences like sudden car turns. Current discussions among physicists explore whether a deeper understanding of inertia exists, particularly in light of concepts like the Higgs field and Mach's principle. While Newton's laws provide a foundational framework, the principle of least action offers a more profound derivation of these laws. The nature of inertia raises questions about its fundamental origins, with some suggesting it may be a relationship between matter and spacetime rather than a property of mass alone. Ultimately, inertia remains a complex and intriguing aspect of physics that intertwines with various fundamental principles.
  • #61
PeterDonis said:
My personal view on GR is closer to that of the Cuifolini and Wheeler textbook I referenced, whose tag line is "mass there governs inertia here", i.e., GR is Machian to the extent that such a question even matters. The Einstein Field Equation says that the spacetime geometry at any event is determined by the distribution of stress-energy in the past light cone of that event. That seems pretty Machian to me.
Doesn't "mass there governs inertia here" imply that the inertial mass of a body depends on the spacetime geometry?
 
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  • #62
timmdeeg said:
Doesn't "mass there governs inertia here" imply that the inertial mass of a body depends on the spacetime geometry?
No. A more precise phrasing would be that mass there governs inertial motion here. Mass there determines the spacetime geometry here, and the spacetime geometry here determines which worldlines here are inertial, and what the path curvature is of worldlines here are not inertial. But path curvature is only proper acceleration; what you feel as weight is proper acceleration times inertial mass. The spacetime geometry does not determine what the inertial mass of a body is.
 
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  • #63
PeterDonis said:
No. A more precise phrasing would be that mass there governs inertial motion here.
Yes this way it makes sense to me and I would prefer to call it just Einsteinian.
 

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