THE SANNER MODEL - Mass, energy and momentum

The Sanner Model (TSM) treats mass as a passive load rather than an active property that resists acceleration. This paper develops the consequences of that principle for mass, energy, momentum, and the speed limit. Mass in TSM is a scalar property that determines how much active force is required to produce a given acceleration: F = m*a_proper, with constant mass. It has no internal state and no mechanism by which it could respond to motion, so it does not change with speed through the aether. What changes with speed is the relationship between clocks and rulers and the aether frame, described by the Lorentz factor gamma = 1/sqrt(1 - v_net^2/c^2). This factor is bookkeeping, not mechanism: it describes how an external observer at rest in the aether sees a moving body's clocks and rulers, while the body itself feels nothing. The speed limit c is likewise not a consequence of mass increase or of the Lorentz factor. It is a transmission property of the aether: the aether carries information, light, and momentum at c, and nothing can be transmitted faster. A rocket cannot accelerate past c because its exhaust cannot carry momentum backward through the aether faster than c; a solar sail cannot, because the light that would push it cannot catch up; a particle accelerator cannot, because the electromagnetic fields that drive it cannot catch up either. The same limit applies to every form of propulsion, for the same reason. The energy of a body is E = mc^2 + (1/2)m*v_xyz^2 + U(r) + E_int, with U(r) = -GMm/r, where v_xyz is the velocity in the rigid xyz frame and the zero point of the potential is at infinity. Energy balance and collisions take place in the xyz frame, with classical kinetic energy and momentum p = m*v_xyz. Clock rates are a separate bookkeeping, determined by the body's total speed through the aether. A body in svev follows the aether passively, so a changing aether velocity field changes its xyz velocity without changing its speed through the aether, its gamma, or its clock rate. The paper also argues that the word "inertia" should be rejected, since it implies resistance where TSM has only a passive mass load. The intrinsic energy mc^2 is reinterpreted as a frame-independent property of matter, and the speed limit is located in the aether's transmission properties rather than in mass or in space. Two falsifiable challenges are proposed: test whether the apparent divergence of energy requirements in accelerators can be accounted for by loss of drive effectiveness without a speed-dependent mass, and search for time-dependent clock-rate effects arising from a time-varying or spatially varying aether velocity field.