![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Possibly related, and sparked by the string theory comments also on the front page story, it seems that string theory always starts with "there are 10 dimensions, which means the other 6 must be curled up small and we can't see them". But today I suddenly thought, what about non moving things? What metaphor can I use to understand how, if two massive bodies were stationary (which, I guess, takes us into a question of reference frames, and therein may lay the answer I'm missing) what about the curvature of space explains the gravitational force that draws them together? Sure, moving things travel straight which ends up curved. It's always bothered me that we're using gravity (real gravity) to demonstrate a metaphor about gravity - gravity effectively constrains the marble to the surface of the sheet, and the sheet bends down, so the marble moves (or orbits, if moving quickly enough and the rubber sheet is frictionless, heh).īut it still made a reasonable amount of sense. (This is, I think, called the metric?) Around now in the Science channel documentary, they drop a bowling ball on a rubber sheet and place a marble on the deformed surface, and it moves. Things will travel in straight lines, but the straight line on this curved surface looks curved. So we have some mass and it deforms space around it and curves it. As I was reading the N=4 Super Yang Mills post on the front page, I ended up thinking again about the curved space explanation of gravity and my understanding of it, which is probably only so so, having been more of a solid state physics guy. ![]()
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