All Questions
480
questions
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0
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32
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Does gravity accelerate you towards the geodesic of light between you and the mass?
If there's a planet far away, you will accelerate straight towards it due to gravity. If you place a Schwarzschild black hole right in the middle between you and the planet (the distance between the ...
- 161
7
votes
4
answers
962
views
Do you always experience the gravitational influence of other mass as you see them in your frame?
You see a galaxy far away. That galaxy is attracting you with a certain amount of gravity. I'm wondering if the gravity influence of the galaxy on you, as measured by you, always ends up being what ...
- 161
-3
votes
3
answers
76
views
Does Matter Cause Curvature or Vice-Versa [closed]
From the way explanations about gravity-acceleration-curvature equivalence are usually phrased here or elsewhere, it would appear many or most think that matter causes space-time curvature.
I cannot ...
- 115
1
vote
0
answers
48
views
How can you use gravity while trying to model gravity? [duplicate]
So consider the usual pop-science spacetime model, a bowling ball on a trampoline. Apparently, the ball should sink into the trampoline, causing a dip in the fabric which causes nearby objects to fall ...
- 141
1
vote
1
answer
99
views
Does dark matter have mass?
When trying to understand what dark matter is, it is helpful to know that some properties of it can already be derived from various observations, such as, it only interacting via gravity and no other ...
- 413
-7
votes
1
answer
135
views
So just because gravity "merely" bends space and isn't "really" a force at a distance - isn't it still a thing at a distance? [closed]
As a preamble, just for clarity as far as I can remember (I was awfully drunk) I have a degree in physics, math and comp sci: my point is "here's a probably stupid question at the level of person ...
- 994
19
votes
6
answers
8k
views
If gravity is not a force, what makes massive objects spheroid?
For most of my life, the explanation given for why celestial bodies like stars, planets, etc. are round is due to gravitational force. Simply put, if an object has enough mass, it will, in turn, have ...
- 413
1
vote
1
answer
88
views
How does gravity act and propagate in a 2+1D universe?—Newtonian versus general relativity
In a hypothetical 2+1D universe:
if we apply the Newtonian concept of gravity, we might expect that the gravitational force between two mass points with a distance of $r$ would diminish linearly with ...
- 618
-1
votes
1
answer
83
views
Apparent paradox in general relativity wrt relative gravity, spacetime curvature and time dilation [closed]
Imagine Alice is near a massive black hole and Bob is on the Earth.
Obviously their gravitational fields are different for each other. In other words, their spacetime is flat for themselves but curved ...
- 27
2
votes
2
answers
111
views
Why does the warping of spacetime make objects move closer together?
I understand why the warping of spacetime affects moving objects, but why would it affect stationary ones if it even does? Would two completely stationary objects not move closer together because they ...
1
vote
2
answers
117
views
Curvature of space from approaching gravity sources affecting observations of expansion
Since gravity curves space, I wonder how the locally increasing density of matter and energy due to the current galactic mergers with the Milky Way affects our perception of the universe.
Basically, ...
0
votes
1
answer
59
views
Are gravitons suggested as the cause of matter curving space?
My understand is that GR says that mass curves space but it does not say why or how this occurs. Is the idea of gravitons that they are the entities that actually affect space?
- 2,224
0
votes
1
answer
85
views
How does light get affected by gravity? [duplicate]
If photons don't have mass, how come gravity can bend light? Because if photons have no weight, wouldn't they not be affected by the fabric of spacetime?
-2
votes
2
answers
115
views
What is the current most widely-accepted explanation of gravity? [closed]
What do physicists typically say gives gravity the ability to act on a pair of objects?
I am not asking for a description of gravity as a scalar field, but rather what the current accepted theory is ...
0
votes
1
answer
85
views
How time creates gravity? According to time curve [duplicate]
How time dilation creates gravity? I'm assuming gravity is not a force(Einstein's words)
