Why do objects rest on space thus causing gravity?

[ILikeAnswers]

So gravity is supposedly caused by objects such as planets, stars, etc. resting on space which curves space. The more massive the object, the larger the bulge it creates, the stronger the gravity.

My question is, why do these objects even rest on space in the first place? It's as if there's a downward pulling force in space itself. There must be something other than gravity pulling objects down because otherwise, orbits won't exist.

I apologize in advance if I just made a really idiotic thread. I'm not a pro at physics, but I'm hoping to learn.

 

[DaveC426913]

You're talking about the "rubber sheet" analogy of gravity. It is only an analogy. An object resting on a rubber sheet just happens to mimic - in two dimensions - a similar geometry to masses in spacetime in 3 dimensions.

Objects do not "rest on space". There is no "downward pulling".

 

[ILikeAnswers]

Then how do orbits work?

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, that's very hard to describe without using the equations. This is why we use analogies like the rubber sheet.

 

[ILikeAnswers]

Is there at least a basic principle or concept?

 

[russ_watters]

Well, yes -- it's the rubber sheet analogy. It works fine, as long as you don't read past it.

 

[ILikeAnswers]

The analogy though uses the gravity on Earth as some sort of downward pull. If there's no downward pull in space and space is 2D, then how do satellites orbit? Isn't an orbit caused when a satellite is caught in the bulge of space? And that satellite's momentum keeps it in orbit rather than it plummeting to the center of the bulge?

 

[Drakkith]

The bending of the rubber sheet is an analogy for the bending of space. The geometry of space is actually changing because of the presence of mass and energy. So, like a ball rolling across the curved surface of the rubber sheet, an object's path through space is altered because of this change in geometry.

 

[A.T.]

Well, yes -- it's the rubber sheet analogy. It works fine, as long as you don't read past it.

It makes perfect sense... if you don't think about it.

 

[A.T.]

The analogy though uses the gravity on Earth as some sort of downward pull. If there's no downward pull in space and space is 2D, then how do satellites orbit? Isn't an orbit caused when a satellite is caught in the bulge of space? And that satellite's momentum keeps it in orbit rather than it plummeting to the center of the bulge?

No. The spatial distortion, represented by the rubber sheet, has only relatively tiny effects for orbiting bodies. For example, the precession of Mercury's orbit is partialy due to that spatial distortion. The orbiting itself (as opposed to moving straight) is mostly due to the distortion of the time dimension, with respect to space:

 

[russ_watters]

The analogy though uses the gravity on Earth as some sort of downward pull.

I've never heard it described that way.

If there's no downward pull in space and space is 2D, then how do satellites orbit? Isn't an orbit caused when a satellite is caught in the bulge of space? And that satellite's momentum keeps it in orbit rather than it plummeting to the center of the bulge?

The curvature of space isn't "downward", it's 3-dimensional, not 2-dimensional. The satellite feels a pull toward the earth.

 

[A.T.]

The curvature of space isn't "downward", it's 3-dimensional, not 2-dimensional.

Right, but the relevant curvature here is that of space-time, which is 4-dimensional.

The satellite feels a pull toward the earth.

The satellite doesn't "feel a pull", it measures zero proper acceleration.

 

[DaveC426913]

I've never heard it described that way.

This is a common problem I have seen people have with the rubber sheet analogy. They see that a heavy mass is pulled downward onto a rubber sheet by gravity, and they ask why the analogy is circular: it uses gravity to explain gravity.

They are taking the analogy literally. They should really just be seeing the geometry, not the causes of the geometry in the analogy.

 

[A.T.]

They should really just be seeing the geometry

Yes, and when you do that, then it becomes obvious that the whole analogy is bad, because spatial geometry alone cannot explain the"attraction" that causes orbits. If you care only about the geometry, and not about up & down, then you can flip the surface upside down, with a hill instead of the dent. But that would create "repulsion" of the rolling balls.

 

[Micheth]

Yes, and when you do that, then it becomes obvious that the whole analogy is bad, because spatial geometry alone cannot explain the"attraction" that causes orbits.

This has really bugged me about gravity=space curvature.
I get that two objects moving with respect to each other would be diverted from their normal paths by mass-induced curved space. I get that totally, it makes complete intuitive sense.
But to consider two objects at complete rest to each other, why would curved space (or even curved spacetime) start them moving towards each other?
If they're not initially moving, then no curvature would seem to start the ball moving so to speak.
(In the sheet analogy, obviously you've got actual downward pulling gravity that gets the ball moving, but that's just the poor analogy at work)

I just don't get it for actual 4-dimensional gravity.

 

[Drakkith]

Because they arent at rest. They are moving through spacetime.

 

[A.T.]

But to consider two objects at complete rest to each other, why would curved space (or even curved spacetime) start them moving towards each other?

Curved space won't. Curved space-time will.

If they're not initially moving,

They advance in space-time, even when at rest in space.

I just don't get it for actual 4-dimensional gravity.

For a vertical fall, you just need one spatial dimension and time, as shown in the videos in post #10. But this doesn't work for whole orbits, as they require two spatial dimensions and time, so 3 dimensions which are then distorted and would need to be embedded in higher than 3D flat space for visualization.

 

[Micheth]

They advance in space-time, even when at rest in space.

The video was helpful.
I guess the difficult part is accepting the idea of "traveling through time" as if it's just something the apple is moving through.
I think of time as just how rapidly or slowly things move with respect to other things (like clocks, photons, etc.)
I.e. without any movement in the universe I couldn't conceive of time, so it seems like there would have to be movement in the first place for time to have any meaning.
But for space-time, time exists separately and conversely causes movement (by bending space)

Although the equations work I'm told :-)

 

[A.T.]

I think of time as just how rapidly or slowly things move with respect to other things (like clocks, photons, etc.)

Things are aging without moving.

But for space-time, time exists separately

The whole point of space-time is that space and time are not separate.

 

[Micheth]

Things are aging without moving.

No, I don't think you'd age if all your molecules, quarks etc. stopped moving.

The whole point of space-time is that space and time are not separate.

Yeah space-time is one entity. What i mean is "time is something separate in the sense of being a dimension", instead of just how one measures the regularity of movment of objects in space.

 

[A.T.]

Yeah space-time is one entity. What i mean is "time is something separate in the sense of being a dimension", instead of just how one measures the regularity of movment of objects in space.

How time is measured in reality, and how it is modeled in a theory are two independent issues.

 

[Drakkith]

No, I don't think you'd age if all your molecules, quarks etc. stopped moving.

Time would pass normally for you. Consider a muon in space. In its own inertial frame of reference it is not moving at all. Yet time still passes for it and it will eventually decay.

 

[Micheth]

Time would pass normally for you. Consider a muon in space. In its own inertial frame of reference it is not moving at all. Yet time still passes for it and it will eventually decay.

I don't think time would pass for you at all. You'd become "timeless" if everything in you and around you stopped moving...

 

[Drakkith]

I don't think time would pass for you at all. You'd become "timeless" if everything in you and around you stopped moving...

As my example demonstrated, that's wrong. Plain and simple.

 

[Micheth]

As my example demonstrated, that's wrong. Plain and simple.

Not so sure about that because don't muons have spin, and being particles aren't they defined as fluctuations in a field, presumably the electromagnetic field?
So, something's going on inside them that allows "time" to have meaning.
If the muon's field fluctuation just stopped and froze, how would it ever decay?

 

[Drakkith]

Not so sure about that because don't muons have spin, and being particles aren't they defined as fluctuations in a field, presumably the electromagnetic field?
So, something's going on inside them that allows "time" to have meaning.
If the muon's field fluctuation just stopped and froze, how would it ever decay?

Oh I see where you're going. Unfortunately if you're going to break the laws of physics you can't make any reliable claims. I can tell you that our understanding of time is not based on any kind of internal motion or fluctuations, so I see no reason to think that time stops if all motion ceases. But since that's an impossibility anyways it doesn't really matter.

 

[Micheth]

Oh I see where you're going. Unfortunately if you're going to break the laws of physics you can't make any reliable claims. I can tell you that our understanding of time is not based on any kind of internal motion or fluctuations, so I see no reason to think that time stops if all motion ceases. But since that's an impossibility anyways it doesn't really matter.

Well I think you're allowed to bring physics to impossible extremes for the purpose of a thought experiment (Einstein's traveling at light speed on a light beam, for example).
By the way I think I should really have been using a word like "change" instead of "motion".
In a world without any observable change in any entity it would be impossible to conclude that any time has passed, i.e. time would cease to have any meaning.
(no muons decaying, nothing happening).
But in contrast in GR, time already exists (as a component of spacetime), and just the presence of mass existing in it warps it and therefore produces change (motion) in other entities.

 

[A.T.]

In a world without any observable change in any entity it ...

But in contrast in GR...

Yes, physics is about our observable world, not some fictitious one.

 

[Rising Eagle]

My question is, why do these objects even rest on space in the first place? It's as if there's a downward pulling force in space itself. There must be something other than gravity pulling objects down because otherwise, orbits won't exist.

Spacetime is a host habitat in which physical fields, particles, photons reside. Any physical entity has the property of a location in spacetime specified by x,y,z,t. In an orbit around a mass such as earth, the path of an orbiting body like the moon is a 2-D geometric object, either ellipse or circle. But in order to visualize spacetime, we need a time axis. So we can use the plane of the orbital path to visualize a 2-D space with time axis perpendicular to it (a 3-D spacetime). Picture a 3-D cartesian axis system where Earth is centered at the origin with x,y as a horizontal plane and the orbital path of the moon is embedded in the plane. The plane is at t=0 and the time axis rises vertically.

The Earth's path in 3-D spacetime, from its own perspective, is having no motion in the plane and rising vertically through time spontaneously, so it sweeps out the time axis. The moon, however spirals upward in an elliptical motion around the Earth (and the time axis itself as well) as it passes through time. The spiral is itself the distortion of the 3-D spacetime from the motionless Earth that has nonzero velocity only along the time dimension. The moon's spiral path is called a geodesic which is thought of as a path through spacetime that an object may travel by momentum only (i.e., no external forces are pushing on it as seen from the object's own perspective). From the object's perspective, it is in weightless space (often called freefall). There are a continuum of geodesics around the Earth so that objects of different mass and orbital velocity will be in freefall at different radii. These geodesic spirals are all collectively the total distortion of spacetime from the perspective of the earth.

Compare this view with Newtonian (classical) space-only-gravity where the object in orbit is pulled by gravity toward the center of the earth, but is moving so fast tangentially to the pull that the physical surface of the Earth below falls away before the pull of gravity can divert the object from its tangential path and steer the object into the Earth's surface. Instead the object is diverted just enough to stay in orbit. Time is irrelevant in this picture, there are no distortions of space or time, and forces on the moon are nonzero.

There is one additional complication. Both the Earth and moon have mass and each distorts spacetime. There is a point on the line between the center of each of these two masses (a lagrange point and center of total mass) where it can be said that both the Earth and moon are each in orbit around and spiral around this point. Here we are ignoring the pull of the sun, galaxy, and other influences and just considering the isolated earth-moon pair. In this case the distortion of spacetime is visualized by a test mass, whose own distortion of spacetime is negligible, that is launched at various velocities and angles through the earth-moon system and its many possible geodesic paths recorded.

 

[Rising Eagle]

Some additional points can help clarify:

Compare this view with Newtonian (classical) space-only-gravity where the object in orbit is pulled by gravity toward the center of the earth, but is moving so fast tangentially to the pull that the physical surface of the Earth below falls away before the pull of gravity can divert the object from its tangential path and steer the object into the Earth's surface. Instead the object is diverted just enough to stay in orbit. Time is irrelevant in this picture, there are no distortions of space or time, and forces on the moon are nonzero.

By direct mathematical analogy, electrostatic physics (coulomb's law) is identical to the physics of Newtonian gravity where mass is replaced by charge. Once again, the same as in Newtonian gravity, there is no distortion of space. In terms of geodesics, anybody that wanders through a region of undistorted space in freefall (i.e., one that is not interacting with any other body) will sweep out a rectilinear path. Geodesics in undistorted space are all straight lines rather than the curved lines seen in the spacetime of GR in the presence of mass. Any curved paths swept out by an object in Newtonian gravity are caused by explicitly and instantaneously active forces on the body causing it to accelerate in some direction and not by curved geodesics. In comparison to the spiral geodesics seen in distorted spacetime, in Newtonian gravity where distortion of space and of time is not possible, there will be no spiral geodesics, only linear ones. To visualize distortion free vs distortion, a 2-D space and time in Newtonian gravity represented with a cartesian axis system can never have spirals and curves for paths of a freely falling body, but 3-D spacetime in the presence of mass will definitely always have spirals and curves.

 

[nitsuj]

I don't think time would pass for you at all. You'd become "timeless" if everything in you and around you stopped moving...

That's the same "trian of thought" I went on when thinking of time.

Likely now is a good time to gain an inderstand of how time is a geometric property, and not a measure of "happenings" (contrary to your understanding that for something "frozen" time has stopped). My mechanical watch slows or speeds up depending on temperature, of course temperature has lots to do with motion, has nothing to do with ensuring the "passing" of time.

Another angle is to consider all our clocks are imperfect, they all have accuracy issues to some degree as they measure "happenings". It maybe helpful to check out an idealized clock such as the "Light Clock", it's a pefect clock that doesn't exist and relies on the relation of space & time with respect to c; not on "happenings" per se but on known laws of physics...specifically the geometric property of time.

 

[wabbit]

I don't think time would pass for you at all. You'd become "timeless" if everything in you and around you stopped moving...

Your view echoes that of Aristotle, roughly "time is a measure of change". I don't think it's wrong, though the idea of something that doesn't change at all, and therefore doesn't interact in any way with anything else, is probably outside the scope of physics.

Still, if we inhabited a completely static universe, then the time coordinate would be unphysical and there would be no meaningul notion of time.

This is of course not our actual universe. However, if we supposed a patch of our universe to be perfectly static (which I think we might conceive of hypothetically in classical mechanics though perhaps not in QM), then the physics of this patch could be described without a time variable, and in that sense, time wouldn't exist within this patch.

Of course observers outside that patch would still assign to it a time coordinate, and would just say that the patch is static - or would they? they would be unable to interact with that patch, hence to measure its properties, so perphaps they would just say that it doesn't exist - I suspect that to them it would be undistinguishable from a hole in spacetime.

 

[pervect]

No, I don't think you'd age if all your molecules, quarks etc. stopped moving.

You're rather missing the point. The point is that time passes. You might not "age" if someone threw you in a freezer (which could stop your molecules from moving, but it'd be doubtful if it would stop the quarks from moving. I'm not aware of any way to stop quarks from moving, and the whole idea is a distraction anyway). The point is that time would still pass, even if you were frozen and not conscious.

You are going from the past to the future, always. Space-time curvature is a rather abstract concept. It's relatively easy to visualize a curved spatial surface (such as a 2d surface of a sphere) The trick to understanding a space-time diagram is to realize that one spatial dimension on the diagram represents time and not space. The ability to do this should be familiar from the concept of a time-line, where events are put in order and represented by a spatial line. [add] An even better example is the common practice of plotting position versus time on a piece of paper. One axis of the paper represents "time", it is equivalent to a space-time diagram.

The difference from the rubber sheet analogy as usually presented is that the rubber sheet is purely spatial - nothing on the rubber sheet represents time.

 

[stevendaryl]

I think of time as just how rapidly or slowly things move with respect to other things (like clocks, photons, etc.)

Well, no offense, but that doesn't make any sense. You need the notion of time to make sense of the words "rapidly", "slowly" and "move". So it doesn't make any sense to define time in terms of those words. I mean, it's circular to do so.

 

[stevendaryl]

The way I think of time as another dimension just like space is in terms of "flip books". I don't know if you've seen those, but they are books with drawings on them, and the drawing on each page is just slightly different than the drawing on the previous page. So if you flip through the pages rapidly enough, you'll see an animated movie. The flip book is a 3-dimensional object that can be interpreted as 2-dimensional objects moving through time. If the animation shows a pebble falling to the ground, then on each page, the pebble is a point (roughly). But the collection of all the pages show the pebble tracing out a curved path in 3 dimensions.

Similarly spacetime id s 4-dimensional object that can be interpreted as 3-dimensional objects moving through time.

 

[nitsuj]

Well, no offense, but that doesn't make any sense. You need the notion of time to make sense of the words "rapidly", "slowly" and "move". So it doesn't make any sense to define time in terms of those words. I mean, it's circular to do so.

Yay philosophy!

 

[Soundmike]

I've heard it explained is that we are all falling.. everything, we fall to the earth, the Earth is falling towards the sun, the sun is falling towards the galactic centre...
to understand gravity maybe this would be helpful



and to get an idea of angular momentum counterbalancing

gravitational pull maybe this would be helpful



And to get an idea that space itself is flowing listen to what said about it when it reached a black hole



I don't get people on here making comments like "I'd need a mathematical equation to explain it" BS!
The cracker of a concept could be a beggar off the street who has the clarity to see blind to the nuts and bolts...
My favourite phrase.. explain it to me like I'm an 8 year old... but saying that if anyone wants to share mathematical equations with me on here it would be my please andn honour to learn your perspective

 

[Drakkith]

I don't get people on here making comments like "I'd need a mathematical equation to explain it" BS!

Typically the mathematical model used is very, very specific and rigorous, and understanding the math usually means you understand the theory without needing someone to 'translate' it into common language. In addition, many concepts are explained very well when you understand the math, but trying to explain the same concept without the math is extremely difficult and prone to confusion and misunderstanding.

For example, explaining the expansion of space is very hard to do if you leave out all the math. You need to bring in analogies like bread rising, balloons stretching, and others that give people the wrong ideas. If, instead, you focus on the math describing how galaxies move apart over time, it is immediately clear just what expansion means. No analogies needed. No misunderstandings.

A big part of the problem is that normal, everyday language is highly subjective. Many words mean slightly different things to different people (or sometimes even wildly different things). For example, if I told you, "I ran to the store earlier", what would that mean to you? Did I get in my truck and drive there? Did I literally run to the store using my own two feet? Did I call a cab or a friend for a ride? These questions could go on and on.

If I gave you a mathematical formula describing my position over time with respect to the store, there's little-to-no confusion there. And from that formula you could get several other properties, such as velocity and acceleration. Now, while this doesn't tell you everything that happened, such as which drinks I purchased or how I got there, it is very, very specific and accurate to what it does tell you.

An example specific to this thread is the description of gravity as one object falling towards another. If I'm falling towards something, that, to me, means that I'm approaching that object. For example, falling to the ground means my I'm moving towards the ground. But look at the Earth's orbit. Being an ellipse, this orbit requires as to be moving away from the Sun for half of the orbit. How can gravity be us falling towards an object if the distance between us and that object is increasing? Now, I'm sure you could write several paragraphs explaining exactly what falling means in this context so that you come up with a way to say that gravity is one object falling towards another. Or, you could forego everyday language altogether and use a math-based model which is much more exact in its language and makes numerical predictions that can be verified to great precision. I think I prefer the latter.

 

[Amrator]

I've heard it explained is that we are all falling.. everything, we fall to the earth, the Earth is falling towards the sun, the sun is falling towards the galactic centre...
to understand gravity maybe this would be helpful



and to get an idea of angular momentum counterbalancing

gravitational pull maybe this would be helpful



And to get an idea that space itself is flowing listen to what said about it when it reached a black hole



I don't get people on here making comments like "I'd need a mathematical equation to explain it" BS!
The cracker of a concept could be a beggar off the street who has the clarity to see blind to the nuts and bolts...
My favourite phrase.. explain it to me like I'm an 8 year old... but saying that if anyone wants to share mathematical equations with me on here it would be my please andn honour to learn your perspective

*Sigh* Where's Feynman when you need him?
If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. - Richard Feynman

 

[Nugatory]

or all your implied mathematical understanding which I take for granted is extensive that you and others who have written here are unable to or unwilling to use the very words which helped you to learn these tools...

I'm having some trouble seeing the validity of this criticism. Further up in this thread we have this post which contains pointers to some of the best plain-English explanations that you'll find anywhere. You don't have to move past those videos to the rigorous mathematical formalism of general relativity if you don't want to, and you'll still have a perfectly sound understanding of how general relativity works.

Of course understanding how general relativity works is not the same thing as understanding general relativity at a level that allows you to solve problems in GR ("How do we expect the orbit of a planet to differ from the Newtonian prediction, and for which objects in the solar system will that difference be large enough to measure?") or to come up with new ideas about what GR means - for that, there is no substitute for working through the math.

 

[Nugatory]

I'm closing this thread, as the issues that are raised in the most recent posts (including my own reply) are best discussed in a new thread - we've answered the original poster's question in this thread several times over.