Rubber Sheet Analogy For Warping Of Spacetime

Now physicists have tested this idea theoretically and experimentally and say it doesn t hold water.

Rubber sheet analogy for warping of spacetime.

This comic refers to a common analogy used to explain how mass distorts space time a bowling ball resting on a sheet of rubber distorts the sheet due to its weight. In general relativity energy and mass have curvature effects on the four dimensions of the universe spacetime. This curvature gives rise to the gravitational force. Since spacetime warping can be a difficult concept to understand and visualise an analogy is often used in physics education.

The mechanisms behind rolling down a dent and the geodesics of spacetime are different. It s often misused to show that mass warps spacetime 895. When a massive object creates a big depression in the sheet the ant which must walk where the sheet takes it finds its path changed warped dramatically. It also implies that the warp is into a different dimension which is not necessary.

Spacetime can be thought as a thin rubber sheet. The way masses warp the rubber sheet and affect other smaller masses can help students develop an intuitive understanding of how gravity works under gr. That s interesting and certainly a. That the warping of spacetime to produce gravity is like the deformation of a rubber sheet by a central mass.

That pit is caused by the central mass is gravity. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. The most common analogy for understanding gravity goes like this. Consider an equatorial slice through the black hole.

When a massive object creates a big depression in the sheet the ant which must walk where the sheet takes it finds its path changed warped dramatically. This state of affairs is almost entirely the result of one the most famous analogies in science. Figure 24 8 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. This in fact is an excellent analogy.

A common analogy is placing a heavy object on a stretched out rubber sheet causing the sheet to bend downward. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. So the bottom line is that the rubber sheet analogy with spacetime is fundamentally flawed it simply cannot reproduce the motion that general relativity predicts. The system has some qualitative features in common with gravity.

The similarity is that something is warping which changes the path. Figure pageindex 2 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. A rubber sheet warped by a heavy stone left is an excellent analogy for a black hole s warped space right. What is the geometry of that slice.