People often illustrate space-time curvature with an heavy ball curving a sheet but the heavy ball is curving the sheet because that heavy ball is pulled by Earth’s gravity but in space there is no gravity without space time bending,so while there is no gravity how is the space-time bent wherever there is mass?
In: Physics
While a sheet deforms downward when you put a ball in it due to the force of gravity on sheet and ball, that’s merely an analogy.
In General Relativity, gravity is the warping of space-time by anything with mass; this warping occurs [in three dimensions](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iGT6a.jpg). The point of the ball-and-sheet stuff is to show why that warping would cause things to slide together or orbit in a way that’s easy to grasp.
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