Why Does Matter Cause Space to Warp?

[Drakkith]

Alright.

 

[Antiphon]

I don't think the OP got a fair hearing. Pinch is maybe a bit too loose in terminology. Let's try to read his mind.

If I might speak for his notion, GR says that a stress-energy tensor is the source of gravity. Traditionally you'd lump in there all forms of energy including rest masses of particles, electric field stresses, etc. Yes, even the electron is a source of gravity in GR, with m0c^2 in the T00 term and it's electric field in the EM tensor, nonzero at least along the diagonal in a rest frame I think.

Now *if* you postulated that space-time had a certain energy density and *if* you assumed that the particle masses and EM energy densities had their origin in this same energy density (Higgs?) and *if* space-time were an elastic medium such that concentrating some of it ("pinching") meant straining it near the pinch in accord with the Einstein equation, *then* maybe the pinch model might be onto something. I think maybe one of these assumption has a case. Most are not going to hold any water.

At best it's a nice mental extension of the overused rubber sheet analogy. I like it but I don't think it works.

 

[TurtleMeister]

I hope my posts did not come off as disrespectful. I appreciate the link Zapper, and the input from you Vanadium. My communications skills are not the best. My girlfriend even thinks I'm mildly autistic. Anyway, if anyone reading this happens to come across anything related to what I posted in post #28, please feel free to send me a pm. Also, I did not mean to hijack the thread. I think what I brought up is very much related to the OP "Fundamental source of gravity", just not in the GR conceptualization.