Is spacetime truly flat without gravitational influences?

[Mr. Paradox]

If someone were to remove all of the gravitational influences on a portion of space would that essentially make that portion of spacetime flat? (Just curious)

 

[Solistics]

Yes it would be flat. However it is impossible to remove all influence of gravity because gravity has no bounds.

 

[Mr. Paradox]

Well of couse i am speaking in theoretical terms

 

[zankaon]

Always curvature, and always mass. In other words, both sides of Einstein eq. The cover of MTW is wrong also. Idealized Minkowski manifold is a tangent space to pseudo Reimannian manifold. Also try to define mass in Minkowski spacetime manifold; some modes are at infiniity.

 

[Bob_for_short]

If someone were to remove all of the gravitational influences on a portion of space would that essentially make that portion of spacetime flat? (Just curious)

Even though you can imagine and even work with the Minkowski space-time, it is limited by the size of the universe which is finite. It occupies the space of about R=c*T where c is the light speed and T is the time since the big bang. there is no sense to speak of space where the matter or light has not reached yet.

Bob.