Go, wond'rous creature!
Mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air,
and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in
what orbs to run,
Correct old Time,
and regulate the Sun.
An Essay
Go, wond'rous creature!
Mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air,
and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in
what orbs to run,
Correct old Time,
and regulate the Sun.
An Essay on Man
Einstein saw a beautiful idea in his notion of curved space and time. He saw that the falling astronaut wasn't being pulled or pushed by anything, but just moving along a straight line (a geodesic) through curved spacetime. He realized that gravity could be reinterpreted, not as a force pulling on objects, but as a curvature of spacetime. Objects falling in a gravitational field — like around the Earth — aren't being pulled, but are simply moving along geodesics in the warped spacetime surrounding any heavy object. The Moon's orbit doesn't circle the Earth because of a pull, but because the straightest line through spacetime brings it back to the same point in space.
This bending of spacetime is particularly noticeable on Earth; throw a ball up in the air, and it follows its geodesic as it rises and falls. You can't miss the bending. T