thought this simplified illustration wld be of interest:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/Explore_Our_Universe/What_is_Warped_Spacetime?/
What is Warped Spacetime?
Article Index
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Page 1 of 2
What is warped spacetime?
Imagine walking down a street in your neighbourhood and coming upon an ordinary-looking house at the end of the street. You observe the house from the outside, walking all the way around it, and in doing so get a pretty good idea of its size, and thus how big you would expect it to be on the inside. You might picture a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and so on. Now imagine walking through the front door and finding that the house is much bigger on the inside than you expected. There is a cavernous living room, a restaurant-sized kitchen, fourteen spacious bedrooms. In short, what you thought would be an ordinary house actually contains a large mansionâs worth of rooms! Such an Alice in Wonderland experience is an example of âwarpedâ (or âcurvedâ) space. Surprisingly, this is not just the stuff of fiction: using his imagination and the power of mathematics, Albert Einstein discovered that our universe is actually like this, and used the phenomenon of warped space (and warped time) to explain what gravity is. This is the basis of Einsteinâs theory of General Relativity.
To set the stage for Einsteinâs ideas, let us begin by recalling what Sir Isaac Newton said about gravity. Imagine a planet, say the Earth, moving in empty space. Being completely empty, there is nothing around (like the Sun) to exert any forces on the Earth, so it moves in a straight line, coasting with whatever speed it had to start with. Remember, there is no friction in empty space to slow, or in any other way change the Earthâs motion â it will coast forever in the same direction and with the same speed, much like a puck sliding across a (nearly) frictionless âair-hockeyâ table. Now let us introduce the Sun, as shown in the figure below. ...."
click on the url to see the diagram and read on... cheers
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Outreach/Explore_Our_Universe/What_is_Warped_Spacetime?/
What is Warped Spacetime?
Article Index
Page 1
Page 2
Page 1 of 2
What is warped spacetime?
Imagine walking down a street in your neighbourhood and coming upon an ordinary-looking house at the end of the street. You observe the house from the outside, walking all the way around it, and in doing so get a pretty good idea of its size, and thus how big you would expect it to be on the inside. You might picture a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and so on. Now imagine walking through the front door and finding that the house is much bigger on the inside than you expected. There is a cavernous living room, a restaurant-sized kitchen, fourteen spacious bedrooms. In short, what you thought would be an ordinary house actually contains a large mansionâs worth of rooms! Such an Alice in Wonderland experience is an example of âwarpedâ (or âcurvedâ) space. Surprisingly, this is not just the stuff of fiction: using his imagination and the power of mathematics, Albert Einstein discovered that our universe is actually like this, and used the phenomenon of warped space (and warped time) to explain what gravity is. This is the basis of Einsteinâs theory of General Relativity.
To set the stage for Einsteinâs ideas, let us begin by recalling what Sir Isaac Newton said about gravity. Imagine a planet, say the Earth, moving in empty space. Being completely empty, there is nothing around (like the Sun) to exert any forces on the Earth, so it moves in a straight line, coasting with whatever speed it had to start with. Remember, there is no friction in empty space to slow, or in any other way change the Earthâs motion â it will coast forever in the same direction and with the same speed, much like a puck sliding across a (nearly) frictionless âair-hockeyâ table. Now let us introduce the Sun, as shown in the figure below. ...."
click on the url to see the diagram and read on... cheers
cheers acro