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 Originally Posted by ChipEaterMan
If spacetime is not a material substance, how can it make MASSIVE objects, which tend not to accelerate due to their inertia, move?
2 - If gravity is not a force, why does an object put in rest relative to the earth accelerate toward it?
3 - If the earth mass curved ONLY space, than an object put at rest relative to the earth would continue at rest relative to it. But this is not what happens, so the earth mass also curves TIME. How does this curved time make things to accelerate?
4 - What did you find more difficult, to answer these general relativity questions or playing heads up against me in Stars?
Thanks
Disclaimer: I am not trained in GR. I took emphasis on QM during my undergrad. I have a smattering of knowledge about certain relativistic phenomena, but I have never learned the math behind a full GR calculation.
I think I've touched on all the major concepts (as I understand them) in prior posts in this thread. In short, it's mass that warps space-time and the warps in space-time interact with each other. Space-time can flow in this manner. The notion that space-time isn't "material" is irrelevant. An electric or magnetic field is not a "material" thing, but it obviously interacts with charged particles.
This paragraph is pure unconfirmed speculation on my part:
If you take Einstein's "Magic Elevator" thought experiment and reform everything to be an object near the Earth's surface, then it seems that the object appears to be falling, but it's really sitting still in moving space-time. In this picture, a gravity well is a kind of space-time Hoover, that sucks in the surrounding space. (I doubt this is a very good description, but it's something I thought about while reading Einstein's Relativity.)
1 - 3) University of Illinois' answer to your copy/pasted questions.
4) GR is way harder than poker.
I'd gladly exchange my candid analysis of your play during that session (for the same) in PM's or another thread.
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