What is the difference between gravity and the curvature of spacetime? - by Alexander Poltorak - Quora Question Review

This document contains a review of the answer by Alexander Poltorak on the question in Quora: "What is the difference between gravity and the curvature of spacetime?"
To order to read all the answers select: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-gravity-and-the-curvature-of-spacetime

Contents

Reflection

1. Answer Review

Gravity is a physical phenomenon. The curvature of the spacetime is an abstract mathematical concept.
That is correct. The problem is that mathematical concepts can not be used to understand the physical reality.
Some philosophers might argue that, whereas gravity exists in nature, spacetime curvature exists in our minds.
That is a wrong argumentation.
Gravity is an intrinsic property of nature. The curvature of the spacetime is a mathematical model.

Gravity existed long before (hint: forever) the curvature of the space was first considered in the 19 c. by mathematicians such as Nikolai Lobachevsky, János Bolyai, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Bernhard Riemann; and long before space and time were married together as the spacetime by Hermann Minkowski in the 20 c.

This historical overview is not important. It is more important to discuss if understanding the universe requires mathematics.
A different issue is how important the mathematical concept spacetime is.
It was Einstein’s brilliant insight that one can model gravity as a curvature of the spacetime. As a model, it works pretty well and withstood the test of time. However, this model doesn’t lend itself easily to quantization. Hence, we still do not have a quantum theory of the gravitational field.
It is more important to realize that light, specific the speed of light c, is not important to understand gravity. What is important is the speed of gravity.
It is important to realize that the curvature of the spacetime is not the only mathematical model.
I expect a different one is Newton's mechanics.

3.

Reflection 1 - Question Review: What is the difference between gravity and the curvature of spacetime?

The problem is that gravity i.e. the force of gravity and the curvature of spacetime are two complete different concepts.
The force of gravity is used to describe (calculate) the tra

If you want to give a comment you can use the following form Comment form
Created: 1 June 2023

Go Back to Quora Question Review
Back to my home page Index