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“If you accept that we live in spacetime, and it can be curved, then I think you should accept that gravity cannot be a force.” I am on the opposite time of th
by atemerev 2y ago
“If you accept that we live in spacetime, and it can be curved, then I think you should accept that gravity cannot be a force.”
I am on the opposite time of thinking — where spacetime itself emerges from particle interaction events. Pairwise distance (i.e. metric) is just yet another interaction parameter in the world graph.
- cryptonector 2y agoThe metrics in GR relate the effects on spacetime of massive bodies, but... the effects relative to... what? Well, relative to flat spacetime. Those metrics are really projections. We need them to understand the effects on waves and matter (which is standing waves anyways, so it's all waves, all the time). But we don't have to take the view that curved spacetime is more fundamental than flat spacetime . There is an equivalence between them, therefore we can say that neither is more fundamental. That means that we can use the interpretation that is easiest to understand.
- atemerev 2y agoThere is no such thing as “flat spacetime”, or, above all, “absolute” background spacetime. This is what relativity explicitly denies. Spacetime appears as pairwise metrics between objects (i.e. quanta/particles), and doesn’t exist beside objects.
- cryptonector 2y agoThere are no absolute coordinates. But things like the Schwarzschild metric very much map between flat and curved spacetime. You should search for "conformal mappings to flat spacetime". This is not a controversial thing.