Gravity

Originally posted by whodey
Finally. I have everyone speechless and saying "it's just to complicated to splain".

Hilarious.

Only you could say "I'm too dumb to understand" in such a triumphant manner.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You mean explain well enough to be understood by anyone.

You do realize the best minds on the planet had a LOT of trouble understanding relativity a hundred years ago?

You just have to think of space as actually being something, although we cannot feel it, just like gravity, we can't see it but we can explain it.

You need to get over the idea tha ...[text shortened]... ou really did not want to know the answer, only to have a forum where you could ridicule people.

I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum?

You say that space is like a three dimensional cloth? Ok, what cloth is there to measure? Where are the threads?

I think perhaps the best explanation I've heard yet is that matter creates a vacuum as it pulls other things towards it. But then, there is no air is space, so how do you create a vacuum? I suppose light has particles we can measure that can be pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Only you could say "I'm too dumb to understand" in such a triumphant manner.

If Einstein can't explain this in layman's terms I doubt seriously anyone else here can either.

Originally posted by whodey
If Einstein can't explain this in layman's terms ....

Actually, with the none mathematical component, he did, partly in the form of his famous "thought experiments". The problem is;

1) the typical layman is still to dumb to really get it.
2) the layman's terms only help to explain some of the basic principles and not the main mathematical components required for complete understanding.

Oh, and I and others here could if we really wanted to, at least arduously, also explain some of those basic principles in layperson terms, but don't here because we know all that effort will be simply wasted here. So, if you are really curious, I suggest looking it up yourself and definitely starting with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_of_reference

first. And then, more fundamentally,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_relativity

because that is where relativity all comes from.

And then, and only if you have understood BOTH frame of reference AND the principle of relativity (else you have absolutely no hope of understanding the rest of it! ) possibly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

Originally posted by whodey
I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum? ...[text shortened]... pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

I would recommend starting by trying to build up some basic understanding of physics, and working your way up from there.

Originally posted by whodey
I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum? ...[text shortened]... pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

You seem to be feeling that space is nothing. What about time?

Originally posted by whodey
I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum? ...[text shortened]... pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

A vacuum is normally regarded as the absence of matter (*) rather than something matter creates. We can measure curvature of space by looking at the bending of rays of light as they pass the (more or less) empty space around massive objects. Gravitational lensing has been observed at cosmological scales, and not just light passing the sun (which was the classic demonstration). The point is that empty space isn't just nothing.

(*) There's a technical subtlety that it refers to an absence of quanta. So it's not clear to me whether an electromagnetic field being zero in some region means that there is no field, or if it means that there is a field that has value zero.

Originally posted by whodey
I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum? ...[text shortened]... pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

space is NOT 'nothing'.

Originally posted by whodey
I simply want to know what empty space is. That seems to be the crux of the issue.

You say that I need to get over the belief that space and the absence of matter is nothing? Why? Is there something there to measure is or there not? I may as well be having a discussion about the existence of God it seems. What exactly is there to measure in a vacuum? ...[text shortened]... pulled towards another object.

So if this is correct, what causes matter to create a vacuum?

We can measure the bending of space by watching the path light takes through it, and the bending of time by having atomic clocks measure very accurately and see the difference between on going at one velocity and another at a faster or slower velocity or a different altitude.

Mass pulls on space and like I said, you can think of space as a kind of three dimensional cloth where matter attracts the lines of gravitational force like magnetic fields interact with one another, but gravity doesn't have a plus and minus or south and north pole, just the one, a pull. But it is not really a pull so much as a falling down stairs.

Googling 'what is space' doesn't seem to help much, they seem to concentrate on what is IN space rather than the more fundamental question of what IS space.

Space IS something, even if we can't exactly answer that question right now.

There are theories that space is 'quantized' which just means it's like digitized, a small piece and go smaller and there is nothing there for real.

They think of space as small bits of something that connects together with lines of force, and postulate a particle called the Graviton that theoretically carries that force like magnetic lines of force which in this case is called electromagnetic force, or RF waves going into light waves and X rays and gamma rays, all the carriers of magnetic force.

It's like matter has an attractive force on the lines of space, like my poor example of a three dimensional weave of lines.

Originally posted by Great King Rat
You seem to be feeling that space is nothing. What about time?

Time is measuring going from point A to point B.

Time is merely a property of space

Originally posted by humy
space is NOT 'nothing'.

I suppose anywhere you do in space there is light, at least, the space that we see.

Light has particles so I suppose any vacuum has particles in it.

Originally posted by sonhouse

Space IS something, even if we can't exactly answer that question right now.

Now see, was that so hard?

A little humility can go a long way.

Most here don't seem to have any though.

Originally posted by sonhouse
They think of space as small bits of something that connects together with lines of force, and postulate a particle called the Graviton that theoretically carries that force like magnetic lines of force which in this case is called electromagnetic force, or RF waves going into light waves and X rays and gamma rays, all the carriers of magnetic force.

It's ...[text shortened]... ractive force on the lines of space, like my poor example of a three dimensional weave of lines.[/b]

This is perhaps the best explanation I've heard yet of what quantifies space.

Thanks for that.

Originally posted by whodey
Time is measuring going from point A to point B.

Time is merely a property of space

No, this isn't correct. In Einstein's universe time is a dimension, it has the same status as the space-like dimensions. If we choose some Cartesian coordinates (this is in special relativity so I'm neglecting curvature for this post) then we can rotate the coordinates to get new ones. Similarly different inertial reference frames involve a transformation where the time like dimension is mixed with one of the space-like dimensions. So time is not just a property of something else, it is one of the dimensions of space-time.

Originally posted by whodey
I suppose anywhere you do in space there is light, at least, the space that we see.

Light has particles so I suppose any vacuum has particles in it.

Light consists of particles, it doesn't "have" them.