Reality → Matter
Matter, regardless of its state and unlike energy and information, exerts weight (has mass) and occupies space (has volume). Chemists and physicists long believed that all substances could be reduced to molecules and these to indivisible atoms of elements. Since the early 20th century, we know that the material world is considerably more complex, with the fundamentals of matter and mass unrevealed [1] .
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Newton’s classical formulas equate mass with inertia or the ratio of force and acceleration. The definition proved extremely useful, but left open fundamental questions about inertia and gravitation. Einstein’s famous formula of mass and energy equivalence, though again extremely useful, does little to elucidate the fundamental nature of mass, and the theory of general relativity describes gravitation as curved spacetime, a beautifully logical but difficult to grasp construct. The standard model of particle physics describes mass with the even more difficult construct of the Higgs boson, and gravitation with an as yet unobserved 'graviton'.