• Question: what is the most amazing fact that you know about space

    Asked by 527sptm42 to Ollie on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Alexander Burke

      Alexander Burke answered on 5 Mar 2018:


      There are so many… this is going to be tricky to answer! To be honest, my favourite fact about space is how Einstein viewed the universe – Spacetime curvature gives rise to “gravity”. First and foremost, I apologise to your future physics teacher, but gravity is not a force but it is a direct result of the curvature of space and time itself. Let me clear this up through a “visual” demonstration.
      Imagine you have a trampoline and you place a marble in the centre. The “fabric” will bend a little but not a huge amount. Now imagine you stick a really heavy bowling ball in the middle, the fabric will now bend to a greater degree. In this situation (with the bowling ball), if you roll the marble from before along the trampoline it will “curve” inwards towards the bowling ball. This is exactly how our very own solar system works where the sun is the bowling ball and the planets are the marbles. The sun bends the “spacetime fabric” around it in such a way that the planets follow curves around the sun (these are called orbits). I personally find this amazing because it’s so naturally intuitive but very challenging to construct using maths. To summarise: I find the concept of gravity due to a curved space-time continuum (space and time mushed together) the most amazing thing about space.

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