Relativity and the Universe Gravitational Potential

This paper reconciles General Relativity (GR) and Mach’s Principle into a consistent, simple and intuitive alternative theory of gravitation. The Universe’s ubiquitous background gravi-tational potential plays an important role in relativity concepts. This gravitational potential (energy per unit mass) far from all massive bodies is c2, which determines unit rest mass/energy, and is the essence behind E = mc2. The Universal matter distribution creates a local inertial rest frame at every location, in which the Universe gravitational potential is a minimum. A velocity in this frame increases this gravitational potential through net blue shift of Universal gravity, causing velocity time dilation, which is a gravitational effect identical to gravitational time dilation. Velocity time dilation from this increase of gravitational potential is found to be same as computed from the low velocity approximation of Lorentz factor. The current Lorentz Factor is applicable only in situations where a local potential is dominant compared to the Universe potential. Time dilation increases with velocity, but does not become boundless for general rectilinear motion in the Universe. Speed of light is not the maximum possible speed in such situations, but only in circumstances where the Lorentz Factor is the appropriate metric. Gravitational time dilation is derived first, and velocity time dilation is derived from it. The mathematics becomes much simpler and more intuitive than GR, while remaining consistent with existing experiments. Some experiments are suggested that will show this theory to be more accurate than GR.