I can’t wrap my head around gravity.
Or any kind of force.
In: Planetary Science
space/ time is like a bed sheet being held by two people. Put a bowling ball and a baseball on the sheet, the baseball will roll to be next to the bowling ball.
Nope and such things sre generally a question of philosophy not science. Science desribes how things behave as they do not really why. Your above question would still be unanswerable for why two like charges repel each other despite electromagentism being far more fully understood
Mass distorts Space-Time. Objects traveling “straight” get turned towards mass by that distortion.
When two objects distorting space-time exist, the space between them gets even more distorted… and more paths start to turn towards them.
Yep. Mass doesn’t attract mass. When you have mass in one place sitting in spacetime, the spacetime curves. The curves in spacetime tell mass how to move. This is part of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
This is usually shown with a flat rubber sheet. Place a weight in the center and you’ll get a “gravity well” and if you then roll a lighter object it’ll spin down toward the center. The weight in the center isn’t pulling the rolling object, the object is rolling down the dip in the rubber. That little difference is the important part.
We do not know the actual mechanics that cause what we call gravity. It’s just something that we can see, feel, and measure, so we know it’s effects.
One of the major areas of physics study right now is the theory of quantum gravity, where they are trying to discover exactly what causes gravity at the smallest scales. Currently it looks like gravity is simply an effect of the rest of physics, and doesn’t exist in quantum theory.
Forces exist. Magnetic attraction works. Things tend to fall to the ground. These are not only observable but measurable. Try lifting a car, then lift a bag of sugar? Which is heavier? What does heavier mean to you? What can’t you wrap your head around?
Mass *doesn’t* attract mass. You’re mistakenly comparing gravity to magnetism, but gravity is not an attractive force between 2 things like magnetism.
Gravity is the “bending” of spactime caused by mass (or more accurately, the stress-energy-momentum tensor). Anything moving through space simply follows that curved spacetime, including massless things like light. The mechanics of this are well understood in general relativity.
As to “why,” that’s a philosophical question and not a scientific one. Science answers how, not why. We already know how through general relativity. Why simply isn’t the kind of question science answers.
Gravity appears to be fundamental. We have lots of descriptions of it, but we don’t know *why*. It is one of the dozen or so things at the *end* of a chain of “Why?” that one might ask about anything in the world.
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