Energy of mass and gravity directly related

We know that rest mass is a form of energy, and that matter holds huge quantities of energy locked away. However, it is not yet known how to release all this energy.

I propose that the energy associated with rest mass is actually the potential gravitional energy of all the matter in the universe falling together.

This could explain where rest mass comes from. If the two are directly related, it should even be possible to calculate the ammount of total mass that exists in the universe, using known constants of gravitational attraction and energies of rest mass.

Think of it this way: There cannot be more than a certain limit on the total mass in the universe. If there was, there would be exponentially more potential gravitional energy, and all this potential energy would add mass somewhere, probably in the individual particles themselves.

And I further propose that if, or when at some distant future point in time, all the mass in the universe falls together into a "singularity", the mass will be entirely converted into energy. All that potential energy will have been realised, and there will not be any mass left. This energy will be in the form of pure electromagnetic radiation, at it is likely that in the absence of any mass, all the electromagnetic radiation in the universe will suddenly collapse (because of coherence) into a single wave-form.

This would also explain why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe. Such a view suggests (but does not require) that anti-matter feels a repulsive force from ordinary gravity. Although most physicists assume that anti-gravity would experience an attractive force under earth's gravity like normal matter, amazingly an experiment has NEVER been carried out to demonstrate this. For technical reasons, it is difficult to cool anti-matter or anti-protons to a level where the effects of gravity can be observed.