The truth is in the details

Since I was very young, I assumed that gravity was a kind of property of matter, especially if it was enormously massive, that it sucked you in and would not let you go.

It was something that just was that way, like a totem. In fact, according to Newton, it was clear evidence. If you throw something up and it falls and, on the contrary, the moon does not fall, it is because the earth sucks with some force.

With this idea I lived for many, many years… and whenever I explained gravity to children or anyone else, I used the expression “suck” to clearly indicate that the earth exerts a force toward its center.

Many times I had heard Einstein’s theory, where he said that massive bodies curve/deform space-time… but it was a concept I thought explained other things, not gravity itself.

Until one day, while watching an Einstein documentary, I had an epiphany and linked the concepts of “curving space” and “gravity”.

I was shocked that I had not realized it before. I suppose my limitations meant that I needed to hear it many times before I could grasp such concepts.

Obviously I believe it because it is said by a man named Einstein and because many experiments have shown that, it appears, it is more accurate than Newton’s theory.

In summary, Einstein’s theory dispels the idea that the earth sucks us in; according to him, it is space that pushes us toward the earth. It is like taking the idea and reversing it. We are not sucked from below but pushed from above. To me, it remains a somewhat incomprehensible idea… but if Einstein says so…

The earth deforms space-time like a ball on a sheet held at its four corners. If we place a small ball on the sheet, it will end up next to the large ball. Is it the ball that sucked it in? No, it is the deformation of the sheet that pushed it toward the ball.

The header image represents what I mean.

Now, when I talk with my children about gravity, I explain it like this… surely someday another explanation will be discovered… since it seems that scientists still have many unanswered questions about many phenomena related to gravity.

I find it appropriate to explain it with this new approach… it is a mental effort to approximate how science sees things… even if tomorrow they see it differently…

Also, it is amusing to see how, when they explain it somewhere where there are adults, many adults end up standing there with astonished faces…