The following conclusion is based on thought experiment about dropping an electron into a black hole.
In A P French, an electron at relativistic velocities has a non symmetrical e-field, weaker along the velocity vector and stronger along vectors orthogonal to its velocity. This statement is made so that the following has an logical inductive basis.
In General Relativity, time moves slower at the bottom of a gravity well or potential as compared to the top of it. The effect is the same as in Special Relativity. An electron charge at the bottom looks smaller than the charge at the top outside of the well, as seen by an observer at the top of the gravity well. An example demonstrates this: two electrons in a very strong gravity field are one meter apart. There passage of time is one half as fast as at the top of the well. Therefore they move apart with only half of the acceleration as expected. (To an observer in the gravity field with the two electrons they seem to have the expected acceleration. This reduced acceleration can be interpreted as charges that have only one half of force between them. This reduced force can be seen as another attractive force, like the magnetic component of moving electrons. It also can be viewed as a reduction of electron charge.
A reduction of electron charge reduces the energy in the electron's e-field. One argument that can be made is that an electron loses its mass when at the bottom of a gravitation field. (An electron that is moving because it was falling has increased mass from relativistic velocities, but this mass is obtained from the energy in the gravity field. The net mass gain is just that of the electron.) Lower particle mass means there is also less gravitational mass in an electron, based on General Relativity's equivalence principle; inertial mass is equal to gravitational mass. From this mass loss, it is possible that the electron and other particles lose their mass fast enough to prevent a gravitational singularity from forming. This doesn't mean black holes can't exist, it just means that a black hole radius can't physically go to zero.
Last Updated on November 7, 1997 by Bob Rutkiewicz