If space-time curvature is just an analogy and space is not really curving, then what's going on for real?

If space-time curvature is just an analogy and space is not really curving, then what's going on for real?

Just re-sleeve already

"Curvature" in this context means intrinsic curvature -- angles of triangles not adding up to 180 degrees etc.

It is not an analogy. Spacetime is actually curving. But Spacetime is not 2D, so that picture is not accurate.

I can't understand this so I'm just going to add distance until its effects are negligible

Don't worry about that, worry about this

explain?

It's not an analogy. Space is really curving. The visual presentations are analogies, because it's hard to show curving 3d space when we live in 3d space.

There's no time to post solutions

Off to my important business meeting

How Can Space Be Curved If Our Eyes Aren't Curved

As you approach the mass the space towards the mass becomes shorter in length, essentially shrinking, in relation to the space far from the mass.

>But Spacetime is not 2D, so that picture is not accurate.
It's an analogy, as OP said.

Spacetime is actually curving.
Typically we consider the metric of our space, usually 4D, to be described by a 'flat-space' component and something that fluctuates/curves. By considering the action of a particle in a weak gravitational field due to some massive source, working only in first order metric deviations from flatness, we can find the geodesic equation for the particle in this spacetime from which we recover Newtonian gravity.

We actually have no idea id "space time is actually curving," whatever that even means.

What we do know is, at our current level of being able to measure and experiment with it, that is ACTS AS IF it were really curving. For any practical purpose, if we act like it were curving, if we assume that is what it is doing, our calculations work out and our experiments accomplish what we predict they will and our space probes go where we intended.

Unless and until ne data suggest a better theory, we can assume it is curving like a mo fo.

But new data has overthrown old models so many times, it would be unsurprising if it happens again some day with our understanding of how gravity works.

>what's going on for real

There is only one thing going on, and this is it.

imagine looking at the web of your example in 2D.

you wouldn't actually see the curvature, the points of the web within the curve would look like they were shrinking, and everything within this shrunken area would look like it was moving towards the center via an unknown source.

gravity is basically just mass causing curvature on 4D space

do you think a singularity actually combines into one extremely tiny, hyper dense particle?

or do you think maybe all of the junk just piles on top of each other, like balls in a 4-dimensional hole?

OP said that the term "curvature" is an analogy, not the image.

Its closer to contraction than curvature

think of all of space, all of energy, as a raft buoyant to itself. It floats on a non-physical superfluid containing all previous arrangements of energy in space. Space curvature is like pushing down on this raft. There is a bottom, and black holes reach it. Every particle dips down just a little bit. This is why they oscillate and create vortices.

this

Analogies are shit. People need to learn what something is without referencing something else. Otherwise, it fucks up their entire perception of it. Just like how the water analogy fucks up people's perception of electricity.

Now explain it like I haven't graduated in physics

>haha in english please?
>bazooper!
normies out

Did you mean standard deviations?
If you can't explain a concept in simple terms, you don't really understand it.

>If you can't explain a concept in simple terms, you don't really understand it.

That is not at all true in physics and math.

Those are simply terms. I don't think grunting has any place in physics discussions, kid.

t. Triggered autists
The only part I didn't understand was "first order metric deviations"