Holey Swiss cheese! Einstein argued that mass curves space, but he didn't know why. How does curvature work and why?

We still don't have a real understanding of gravity. It is both the weakest force and the strongest force at the same time.

I agree. What's needed is a fresh idea on very basic physics.

I think I know what you mean. Gram for gram, its wimpy, but when applied by massive things like planets or stars, oy!

With the geodesic, everything is a straight line...

okay but *why* is that the straight line? i'm not searching for a description so much as an explanation of how mass 'causes' the 'straight' path to be a curve. i'm afraid i might ultimately be asking Why is there gravity at all?

So like gravity? Cause all matter exerts gravitational pull and gravity affects that kind of thing doesn't it? And like, I read in a few places that high levels of gravity actually slow down the passing of time. So since all matter has gravity it would probably result in some kind of curvature or another to a certain extent. I'm not a scientist and I might have no idea what I'm talking about but I wanted to take a crack at trying to explain it for myself.

Well its definitely not my area either but Einstein predicted that sufficiently massive objects, like the sun, would deflect light passing nearby, and do so by curving the space around it. There was soon experimental support for the idea. But the mechanism of curvature and exactly what it acts on, meaning the fabric of space, remain mysterious.

yeah like a black hole

Yes. The degree of curvature for deflected light should especially strong as it passes by a black hole

okay how about space cheese 🧀?

well that is pretty good i think! cheese has its structure based in fundamental physics, and we might understand that pretty well already.

Excellent!

and so we have earned our lunch ( :