Mass-Energy and Space-Time; A Few Questions

[peter]

Are Mass-Energy and Space-Time interconvertable? {Did I read somewhere that space has mass [albeit only a bit]?} If not, what is the relationship between them? Would a GUT achieve this [greatly to be wished for] existential simplification Are such questions reasonable (or even rational )?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Clearly, matter and energy are interchangeable, something we have known for a long time. It was only in the last 75 years, though, that we have learned that matter and energy are just "compressed" spacetime--you are made of the same stuff as the distance between you and the computer you are using.

Can they changed back and forth into each other? *shrug* I suppose it is possible, even if only at a small scale, but at this time I have no idea how such a thing might be possible. We will have macro-level quantum materials like room-temperature superfluids before we have the ability to "decompress" matter into its spacetime equivalent.

[peter]

That's interesting Hashi. Is matter being a form of highly compressed space-time a mathematically based .....law, theory, call it what you will..... fact that is supported experimentally of itself or does it just sit within a huge framework of theory that is supported by experiment at a distance [if that makes sense]? I'm curious as to exactly what is compressed, what is twisted into the little 'knots' of fundamental particles that we see in our colliders. It bespeaks, surely of an even more 'fundamental' lower level of which, as yet, we hear very little spoken at the [certainly simplistic] level of 'popular' science which I inhabit! [Idea! That would have to be the strings/loops/membranes of those deeper theories wouldn't it?]