Einstein's theories are an example of the interrelationship of matter-energy and space-time. Each massive body has a gravitational field which manifests itself as a curvature of space surrounding the body. The field itself is seen as curved space. The gravitational field and the structure of space are the same. Matter cannot be separated from its field of gravity and the field cannot be separated from the curved space. Thus matter and space are seen to be inseparable parts of a whole. ¹¹

Mass is no longer considered to be a material structure, and hence particles are not seen as consisting of any basic "stuff," but as bundles of energy. Particles must not be pictured as static three-dimensional objects, like grains of sand, but rather as four-dimensional entities in space-time. Their space aspect makes them appear as objects with a certain mass, their time aspect as processes involving the equivalent energy. Particles are probability patterns interconnected in an inseparable cosmic web. ¹²

As presently perceived in quantum mechanics, the quantum field is seen as a fundamental physical entity, a continuous medium which is present everywhere in space. Particles are thought of as local condensations of the field, energy concentrations which come and go, thereby losing their individual character and dissolving into the underlying field.¹³... Any material particle, such as an electron, is nothing more than a small domain of electrical field within which the field strength assumes enormously high values, indicating that a comparatively huge field energy is concentrated into a very small space.¹⁴... There is a basic interconnection with matter, showing that energy of motion can be transformed into mass, and suggesting that particles are processes rather than objects. ¹⁵

Einstein believed that field theory gave a more true representation of reality than did the particle concept. Field equations could have solutions in the form of localized pulses, represented by a region of intense field that could move through space stably as a whole, thus simulating the presence of a particle. These pulses do not end abruptly, but spread out over large distances with decreasing intensity. The field structures associated with two pulses will merge and flow together in one unbroken whole. The perception of an existent particle would appear to be an abstraction that furnishes only a valid approximation of reality.¹⁶

The distinction between matter and empty space was abandoned when it became apparent that virtual particles can come into being spontaneously out of the void, and disappear again into the void, without any nucleon or other strongly interacting particle being present. The supposed vacuum of space is far from empty. It contains an unlimited number of particles which come into being and vanish without end. The "physical vacuum" as it is perceived in field theory is not a state of nothingness, but rather contains the potentiality for all forms of the particle world. The so-called vacuum is a "living void" pulsating in a continuous rhythm of creation and destruction. ¹⁷

Fred Hoyle has stated, "Present-day developments in cosmology are coming to suggest rather insistently that everyday conditions could not persist but for the distant parts of the universe, that all our ideas of space and geometry would become entirely invalid if the distant parts of the universe were taken away. Our everyday experience, even down to the smallest details, seems to be so closely integrated to the grand-scale features of the universe that it is well-nigh impossible to contemplate the two being separate.".¹⁸

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