I often hear that gravity is not a force, but simply the curvature of spacetime. A common example given is having a heavy ball placed on a rubber sheet. The ball sinks, distorting the sheet. Therefore, other “orbiting” objects will also tend to roll towards the sunken part.
What I can’t understand is, what causes the objects to “fall” anyway? On earth, that’s just the planet’s gravity. If you did the same experiment on space the objects wouldn’t roll down. So how is this an explanation of gravity as a curvature, when it requires a *force* to work? Is there a better explanation? Am I just missing something?
In: Physics
Mass slows time.
The closer you are to a mass, and the larger the mass, the more it slows down time.
This means there is a time gradient. Your head is being slowed less by the mass (the Earth) than your feet.
Every atom, every particle in every atom also experiences this gradient.
Time moving faster on the far side of a particle than the near side causes that particle to be deflected towards the Earth.
Literally, its future is on the ground.
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