Is there a simple explanation of gravity?

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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

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Everything in the universe pulls everything else in the universe towards it, the magnitude of which is determined by the mass of the objects and their distance from each other.

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