The discussion clarifies misconceptions about the space-time fabric, emphasizing that common visualizations reduce the complex four-dimensional space-time into two dimensions, which can be misleading. The analogy of the sun creating ripples in the fabric is a simplification that does not accurately represent the interaction of mass and time. It is established that while 3D illustrations are used, they cannot fully encapsulate the four dimensions of space-time, and the best approach is to visualize only two spatial dimensions alongside time.
PREREQUISITESStudents of physics, educators explaining general relativity, and anyone interested in the complexities of space-time theories will benefit from this discussion.
This is a common misconception. In this analogy the fabric doesn't represent space-time, just reduced space (2D dimensions of it). It shows just the spatial curvature which has some effects on its own, but the main effect of gravitation (mass attraction), cannot be explained without the time dimension. Here are links to better visualizations:gsingh2011 said:I don't understand how the space-time fabric works. I've seen videos where the sun is in the space-time fabric and it makes a ripple in it and the Earth revolves around this.
Yes you have to imagine we live in an universe with less dimensions to understand this curvature visualizations by embedding. The illustrations are 3D, so a curved diagram in it can be 2D at max. The space-time diagrams linked above are not different that that aspect. They just use 1 space & 1 time dimension instead of 2 space dimensions.gsingh2011 said:This works fine if our universe was 2D,
If there was something above the sun in that diagram, it would not be in our universe. The 3D dimensions of these illustrations are a virtual embedding space without physical meaning. It is needed to visualize curvature of the diagram.gsingh2011 said:but what if there was something above the sun in that diagram?
Well you don't. You can only visualize 2 of the 4 space-time dimensions in a 2D diagram.gsingh2011 said:Basically, I'm confused on how you put 3D space along with a fourth dimension time in a 2D plane...
The best way, I suppose, is to suppress two spatial dimensions and view space-time as 2-dimensional.gsingh2011 said:I don't understand how the space-time fabric works. I've seen videos where the sun is in the space-time fabric and it makes a ripple in it and the Earth revolves around this. This works fine if our universe was 2D, but what if there was something above the sun in that diagram? Basically, I'm confused on how you put 3D space along with a fourth dimension time in a 2D plane...