Gravity- it’s known as the “weakest fundamental force”, but we know the “attraction” is really just objects falling along the curvature of space toward a more massive object. I don’t understand how this explanation of gravity relates to the other fundamental forces.
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Last I checked getting gravity to relate to the other forces was the only holdup for GUT. It’s a force, because well that’s what it is, the curvature stuff doesn’t contradict that any.
It produces a force. That is an acceleration in a given direction.
In reality it’s a “Fictitious force” or “apparent force”, but for every day people you don’t need to worry about it. It only comes into play in certain areas of high level physics.
For everyone else, you can just consider it a force, it’s fine.
They’re both equivalent descriptions and one is not more right than the other. Even Einstein never claimed that as far as I know. Curved space time will manifest itself as a force in a flat space time. The curve taken by light passing a heavy object can be described by using force alone. The description stems from (Einstein) that the gravitational force happens to be proportional to the inertial mass in Newton’s second law. Which is amazing if you think about it.
The Equivalence principal says that a uniform gravitational field is indistinguishable from a uniform acceleration. Newton defines a force as that which accelerates a mass. Gravity causes acceleration and is thus is a force.
This just came up in another post and the concensus was pretty much that the curvature doesn’t explain the mechanism(s) that convert the potential energy to kinetic energy, or in other words how this explanation relates to the others.
If you figure it out I think you might get some kind of prize 🏆
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Sorry OP, like u/G4m5t3r said, a good answer to your question would earn the person providing it a Nobel Prize. It’s a great question because you’re right. The missing graviton does make gravity different. Maybe we’ll discover it and the question is resolved, but we haven’t yet because it might not exist at all, and many of the smartest people in physics are wondering basically the same thing you are.
> I don’t understand how this explanation of gravity relates to the other fundamental forces.
Don’t worry neither does anyone else.
Nobody answer this question! It’s a trick to steal the Nobel Prize you’re obviously about to earn!
“Force” is just a handy mathematical bin we put phenomena into when they meet the criteria of, well, a force. It being labeled a force does not and should not provide any insight into the actual mechanism which causes the effects we deem force-like.
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