Rubber Sheet Analogy Fails To Explain Gravity

Two people are located side by side on the equator of this sphere.

Rubber sheet analogy fails to explain gravity.

The rubber sheet analogy only works even for the orbits if you assume that the orbiting object tends to want to roll down hill in the dip made by the bowling ball. Let me try the ant analogy in a bit more detail. Imagine a 2d spherical shell embedded in 3d space. Is there no gravity.

The ants walk forward. Figure 24 8 three dimensional analogy for spacetime. Just placing an object somewhere in that dip will result in it rolling down the slope towards the bowling ball. Spacetime can be thought as a thin rubber sheet.

All analogies are flawed that s why they are analogies and not scientific theories. The analogy presented therein is somewhat similar to the rubber sheet one but does away with the weight in the center. The dented rubber sheet done in earth s gravity is a not too bad analogy for newtonian gravity. The orange is curved space time.

It s often misused to show that mass warps spacetime 895. In space it will follow a straight line and go over any hole on the surface. Since i read cosmos long ago i see the same analogy about the balls rolling on a rubber sheet used to explain how gravity works. Since spacetime warping can be a difficult concept to understand and visualise an analogy is often used in physics education.

The way masses warp the rubber sheet and affect other smaller masses can help students develop an intuitive understanding of how gravity works under gr. On a flat rubber sheet a trained ant has no trouble walking in a straight line. Indeed physicists have known for ten years that a rubber sheet deformed by a central mass can never take on a shape that reproduces the gravitational effects of spacetime. Explanation this comic refers to a common analogy used to explain how mass distorts space time a bowling ball resting on a sheet of rubber distorts the sheet due to its weight.

But a ball rolls on a surface because gravity is pulling it down. The system has some qualitative features in common with gravity. The right hand side of this pair of drawings is closer to real life but still not accurate. They both begin walking parallel to each other northward toward the one of the poles.