Another one for the scientists.

When I was at school I was taught that gravity is an effect of the deformation of space.

Imagine you have a very large net stretched laterally across a car park suspended a few feet in the air - just like a trampoline. That is space.

If you now get a bowling ball and roll it across the net, the net will deform in the vicinity of the ball. If you introduce another smaller ball in the vicinity of the bowling ball the smaller ball will be drawn toward the bowling ball. The further away the smaller ball - the less the effect. That's roughly how gravity works.
 
joe-90 said:
When I was at school I was taught that gravity is an effect of the deformation of space.

Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity as a deformation of space, just as you were taught, and the net model is an attempt to show how this would work in 2-D space. The warping of 3-D space into a fourth dimension is not so easy to draw! :wink: :wink: :wink:

What general relativity doesn't tell us is exactly how mass warps space or, for that matter, what mass is. :( :( :(
 
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