Ik this might be a difficult one but I genuinely want to wrap my head around this
In: 9
Newton’s first law states an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.
But on Earth, we see objects seemingly start to move downwards spontaneously. So to explain that, we said there’s an attractive force called gravity that everything with mass has.
Einstein said, actually it’s not a force. So Newton’s first law was wrong? Nope. Einstein says things with mass simply bend space itself. So an object going in straight line only looks like it’s curving because space is curved. Like how a straight line on a globe looks curved when you flatten it out to a map.
But then why do objects that aren’t moving start moving? Well, an object at rest is simply an object moving in a straight line *through time*. Mass doesn’t just curve space, it curves space*time*.
By explaining gravity as a curvature in spacetime, Einstein can explain everything we see in real life without actually having any actual forces get involved.
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