Special & General Relativity Questions and Answers
How does a body actually bend space-time?
Einstein developed general relativity, which describes the gravitational field, with the mathematical idea that there was no difference in the mathematics, between the role played by the gravitational field, symbolized by
g
uv
and the metric tensor
defining the geometry of space-time. Without the
gravitational
field, space-time would not exist. That being the case, whenever
we ask how space-time gets to be curved by matter, we are simply
asking the
equivalent question 'how does the gravitational field
change?'. The
mathematics provide us with the framework we need
to interpret questions such
as 'what does it mean for space-time
to be curved?' by letting us rephrase
the question in terms of
our old friend the gravitational field. Presumably, a
body produces
a gravitational field the same way that other bodies produce the
other fundamental forces, however, we have no experimental proof
that a quantum
description for the gravitational field is a
reachable goal anytime soon.
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All answers are provided by Dr. Sten Odenwald (Raytheon STX) for the NASA Astronomy Cafe, part of the NASA Education and Public Outreach program.