dcarrera
Member
It's not offset by gravity either because gravity is *not* a form of energy in GR, it's a *geometric feature* for crying out loud!
The former dos not preclude the latter, and you are wrong. Might as well say that stretching a rubber band is a geometric feature. I have done a lot of problems in GR involving potential energy. In GR, the equivalent notion of potential energy comes from the metric. I have my notebook open right in front of me, and I have pages and pages treating potential energy (typically just called "the potential"). For example, right here I have the derivation of the formula for hydrostatic equilibrium which equates the gradient of the potential with the gradient in pressure. This thing *has* to be in the theory if the theory is to describe hydrostatic equilibrium. Let's see.. what's the next chapter?... Oh, orbits in the Schwarzchild metric. That won't have potential in it, will it?... Of course it does. I have here a derivation of the equations of motion that correspond to the Newtonian potential and angular momentum, a description of unbound orbits, and so on. Would you be surprised to hear that unbound orbits are those where the potential is greater than the kinetic energy? Yes, that's GR.
You see, if you don't know GR, you can't go around pontificating about what it does or does not do. In Newtonian gravity, "potential energy" is ability of the gravitational field to alter the trajectory of a body. In GR, that same ability is provided by the metric. It is only more general, so in GR the field equations provide the Newtonian concepts of energy, momentum and pressure together, as those are simply different components of one tensor.
The universe has always had "net positive' amount of energy because energy exists and it cannot be created nor destroyed. This is a *basic law of physics*. Energy has existed in some for or another *eternally*.
Basic law of physics = It fits your intuition and preference?
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