We have studied the picture of electric field and magnetic field in the school. What is the picture of gravitational field? How it permeates the space?
The interstellar space is like a thin flexible rubber sheet. When a celestial object is present on the sheet, it dips and sags at that point and creates a saucer like shape around the object. The object may be the sun, a star, a planet or a satellite.
All the bodies are attracted and fall on the planets and the earth because the space around them is curved. We say, they are attracted by gravitational force.
The cycle race take place in a saucer shaped stadium. As a speed increases, the cyclist automatically moves to the inner or bottom level of the stadium. similarly the planets revolve around in the sun's stadium. The planets cannot escape from the well formed by the sun. Since the sun is the most heaviest body in the solar system, its disturbance in the space is much greater.
When some star dies, all its mass contracts into a single point called singularity. The singularity pierce the space sheet and creates a hole. We now call it as a black hole. Anything which goes near the black hole is simply falls down.
Near the celestial body, not only space curves but also time. Time runs fast near the planets. But it slows down when we move away from the planet. There is a few microsecond difference in time between the top floor and the ground floor of the empire state building.
"The space-time curves around the heavenly bodies" is the idea in the general theory of relativity formulated by Einstein. It is proved that light ray that travels near the sun curves due to the curved space. The idea of Einstein help us visualize gravity-space-time and make us understand more.
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