how the “bending space-time” visualization of gravity works/looks like in 3D space? (i.e. gravity is often visualized with a picture of a flat sheet-like plane, with a round object sitting on that plane and bending it so that objects roll towards the object).

Question

Obviously gravity isn’t acting on a 2D plane or objects would gravitate to the “bottoms” of other objects. I’m curious about whether there is a way to visualize how this model works in 3D.

In: Physics

Answer 1

The visualization is just an abstraction, as gravity exists across more than 3 dimensions. The visualization is mostly good at conveying the principal that gravitational force gets stronger along a similar curvature to the ball in the trampoline curvature.