Thursday 2 September 2010

Gravity

Now, I should start this off by saying that my whole problem here might be that I am too thick. I fully accept that possibility. Today, I am struggling with Gravity. A lot of people do I think. The standard simple explanation, as I understand it, is to show a body (such as the Earth) represented by a big ball, sitting on a rubber sheet. The sheet naturally deforms and the ball sits in a dip. If you then roll a marble around it, it makes a circle, due to the shape created by the big ball on the sheet. The idea being, I gather, that a mass distorts the space around it. It works on a membrane, with gravity pulling the weight down but not I think if the bodies were suspended and forces were acting equally all around them. In what way then would each object be aware of the other? If the force is directional such as the distortion to the rubber sheet there is some understanding, but that requires something pulling in an arbitrary direction, such as, in our model, gravity! It doesn't work, there has to be some 'connection' between the two, whether it is a rubber sheet or 'the fabric of space and time'. They are aware of each other. It doesn't make sense and yet, here again we find that without it some pretty wonderful things couldn't happen. Like me being able to sit on this chair, or in all probability there 'being' anything at all.

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