We investigate a combined conservative field, in which classical gravitational and electrostatic sources also exhibit mutual interactions. Hitherto neglected, the coupling between mass and charge may be necessary for constructing a unified conservative force field generated by a single underlying source. We determine
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We investigate a combined conservative field, in which classical gravitational and electrostatic sources also exhibit mutual interactions. Hitherto neglected, the coupling between mass and charge may be necessary for constructing a unified conservative force field generated by a single underlying source. We determine the coupling constant of the cross-field components as the geometric mean (G-M) of Newton’s
G and Coulomb’s
K constants, in both SI units and dimensionless form. Consequently, for two identical objects, the cross-force (
) is the G-M of the familiar Newton (
) and Coulomb (
) forces, so that
, where
. Remarkably, such cross-forces should be measurable in torsion balance experiments involving a suspended neutral mass interacting with a partially ionized gas. Furthermore, we apply our new formulation to estimate the dimensionless amplitude
of gravitational waves that are emitted by inspiraling Reissner–Nordström (RN) black hole binaries, expressed in terms of ratios of the four fundamental lengths of the problem: the distance to the binary
D, the binary separation
R, the Schwarzschild radius
of mass
M, and the RN charge (
Q) length scale
. In this classical setting with speeds much lower than the speed of light
c in vacuum, the surprising appearance of the maximum relativistic tension force
is duly noted.
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