Nicholas wrote:

There is no refernece. It is my original knowledge.

I can express my opinion here. Is it not the purpose of this forum?


The substnace of space is that it is a physical emptiness that has curvature of direction.

Mitch Raemsch

Here Nicholas, I copy and pasted a section of an essay written by the creator of this form.  Chris states what the purpose of the form is.  You can read the whole article if you click on About right under the Ilovephysics.com title at the top of this thread.



“ilovephysics.com was created as a tool to change the negative perceptions others have about our favorite science. This site is here to help you share your love of physics with the world.”

Positive change will not be brought about by ignoring scientific references and just stating your opinions.  Nobody will get a true understanding of the world of physics if this form is filled with everyone’s personal opinions.

“Physics should be explained in simple to understand language. That’s how we try to do it at ilovephysics.com.”

Physics should be explained in simple language, not pure opinion unfounded in physics.


“We’ve built a community of hundreds of physics fans from across the world, and each of us is ready and willing to help you in your quest to understand physics.”

How can you be part of the community and help others understand physics if you do not refer people to references, or communicate from the point of view ofsomeone  who is sharing his knowledge of the field of physics.  Opinions that are not grounded in science will only misinform others in the understanding of physics



“ilovephysics.com went online in January 2004 with the purpose of promoting and facilitating physics education. Bold goals for a website I mainly built for my high-school students.”

Promoting and facilitating physics education can not happen if no one communicates the concepts and discoveries in science, and just talks of their opinions with no basis in science. Nicholas. If this form is just filled with everyone’s opinions and no actual science then when someone surfing the web comes across this form and is educated in science, they will not want to participate because it does not follow strict science.  Those new to the subject of science who come to visit this site would get a distorted view of science since it was filled with opinions that do not correspond to any known established facts or theories in science. 

You seem to just say things with no intention or purpose of promoting the field of physics.  You come across as someone who does no research in science and does not care about continuing the communication of the findings and established facts of science.  This and all the other science forms are a great place to learn and talk with others about science, but all forms will break down when the participants no longer stick to science and just start to daydream and present their own opinions as fact.  Science at that point gets left behind and the whole purpose of this and many other forms gets killed.   


Think before you speak, do your research and then you and the rest of the form will benefit from your improved participation.

Nicholas wrote:

As Einstein said about opinion: "You have to start somewhere."

By the way I don't deal in opinions.

The substance of space is curvature.
The substance of time is its slowing.

Mitch Raemsch -- Light Fell --

There is no refernece. It is my original knowledge.

I can express my opinion here. Is it not the purpose of this forum?

The substnace of space is that it is a physical emptiness that has curvature of direction.

Mitch Raemsch

Last edited by Nicholas (Today 02:00:20)


The last two quotes from you contradict each other.  Think about what you are writing.

Where is your reference?  You apparently did not understand what I wrote.  If you refuse to clear up your misunderstandings and continue to ignore scientific references then how can I, or anyone on this form take you seriously. Are you on here to learn? Or is it just some place to for you to talk about your opinions.  Maybe you might have better luck convincing people that your opinions are science if you start your own form where opinions and contradictions rein supreme.  I ask for one reference to back your statements and you will not prove to me that what you think is true is based on scientific data.  I have to wonder how old you are, and what type of education you have gotten by your statements on this form.  What are you hopping to accomplish here?  What is your point.  Stick to science, why is that so difficult for you?

Did you even read the essay written by Chris, the founder of this form? 

Where is the scientific reference that backs up what you are saying?

steve wrote:

Martin,  you say the Big Bang created space-time.  So what are the physical building blocks that came together at this virgin birth of the universe?  Or did this space-time thing also come from nothing, made from nothing into something.

We have no way of knowing.

That goes against the laws of physics.

No it doesn't. We deduce the laws of physics from observation and measurement, and use inference to build theories that explain those laws. The best theory of the origin of the universe we have to date is the "Big Bang Theory," which seems to provide a pretty good picture of where we came from and where we may be headed, but it does not provide any insight whatsoever into what preceded it all. We simply don't know what the laws of physics—if they existed at all—looked like prior to the Big Bang.

The Big Bang theory is more of a belief than a scientifically, or mathematically proved occurrence.

Scientific theories can never be "proven" the way mathematical theorems can. They are judged by the extent of their success or lack thereof, as determined by experiment.

do you believe in the Big Bang because that is what you have been told as the beginning of the universe, despite all of the flaws in this idea.

I believe in the Scientific Method.

steve wrote:

Martin wrote:

steve wrote:

...
You say that  physical “real life” measurements of curved space are indeed made.  Made by who?  Which scientific test was done to do this?  Someone actually measured the curve of space, or are you just making this conclusion from math equations?   

The results of the measurements?   Where did you get these results?   Are you saying someone measured curved space and got real results (measurements)

There's been a century of observations and experiments confirming gravity's curvature of space-time, beginning with the so-called "classical tests of general relativity" that Einstein proposed in 1916:

1. The precession of the perihelion of Mercury (verified by Einstein in 1916);
2. The deflection of light by the sun (first observed by Eddington in 1919);
3. The gravitational redshift of light (initially established by Adams in 1924).

1.  This was an observation  by man that a planet has a peculiar orbit,  it does not show that this orbit is without a doubt caused by a thing in space that is being bent by a mass.

The precession was known for many years. The only explanation was (and is) that it is a result of the effects of gravity. However, the amount of the precession predicted by Newtonian mechanics was not consistent with the amount actually observed; the amount predicted by General Relativity was.

As far as "without a doubt" is concerned: No scientific theory ever is "without a doubt."

If this space-time thing were a real entity

What do you mean by "real entity?"

it would have a mass and a location in space.

Oh? Would that also apply to, say, the electromagnetic field?

If mass warps this space-time thing then it would bend this thing in  360 degrees around the whole mass thereby making a space-time bubble, and objects would have the ability to move in any orbit around a large mass.

According to whom?

Why is it that all of these objects that are  orbiting larger masses only orbit in one plane and not freely orbiting in any direction?

The orbits followed by orbiting masses are solutions to the equations that express laws of physics. 

Is it that these large masses are resting on this thing called space-time? It seems so convenient that in all of the diagrams used to represent the idea of space-time bending, the mass is shown moving down into this space-time thing.  Why only down?  Is something pulling it down?

I suspect that you are referring to the "bowling-ball-on-a-trampoline" type diagrams, which are nothing more than 3-dimensional analogies for envisioning the behavior of large masses in 4-dimensional space-time. They are meant to be helpful, not literal.

2. The deflection of light is an appearance.  Per wikipedia on Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington it states:     “According to the theory of general relativity, stars near the Sun would appear to have been slightly shifted because their light had been curved by its gravitational field.”

The stars did not move, they just appeared that way.  this appearance does not show why it appears this way. An observation of light being bent does not prove empirically that this can only be caused by the existence of a thing floating in space that is bent by mass.  Besides where is the scientific data that shows how mass bends space-time.  What is the correlation between the amount of mass and its warping of space-time.  Einstein never gets into that.

Mass is indeed correlated—intimately correlated—to the warping of space-time via Einstein's Field Equations, the solutions of which predicted the results that Eddington measured.

Mass is a term used to describe the amount of force that is exerted on a body by gravity.

That would be "gravitational mass." There is also "inertial mass." The fact that the two happen to be equal always puzzled physicists. This equality was a key ingredient in Einstein's development of General Relativity.

So gravity pulls mass into this space-time thing?


Has anyone explained what the mass of an object has to do with bending space?  No, we are just told that it occurs, with no explanation of how.

Nonsense. After developing the Special Theory of Relativity—an achievement that in and of itself likely would've provided him perpetual fame—Einstein spent another 10 years developing the General Theory.  The details of his efforts—his thought processes, arguments, analyses and results—are well documented. Even then, the physics community didn't accept his "pronouncements" on face value. Relativity went through—and continues to go through—significant "peer review" and experimental testing. Although there is periodic debate regarding how some of the details of the theory should be interpreted, laboratory experiments and astronomical observations continue to provide increasingly precise supporting evidence. (However, I fully expect that the theory eventually will be modified (or replaced) to accommodate quantum mechanics—and vice versa.)

Here is a typical definition of space-time from the Essential Dictionary of Science:   
“The general theory of relativity describes how space-time is distorted by the presence of material bodies, an effect we observe as gravity.”
Really? The theory of general relativity describes how space-time is distorted.  O.k. lets look up a definition of general relativity to see how space-time is distorted.

Definition from same dictionary on general relativity:  “The geometrical properties of space-time were to be conceived as modified locally by the presence of a body with mass.”  Still no explanation of how.

Lets try a different scientific dictionary.  The Dictionary of Scientific Literacy states that the definition for general theory of relativity is:

  Einstein's theory views gravity as a property of space rather than force between bodies.  As a result of the presence of matter, space becomes curved, and bodies follow the path of least resistance among curves.”

Still no mention of exactly how this “real” thing happens.  All definitions I have read just state that this action occurs with no mention of exactly how.  Also why would a body in
motion change course unless acted upon by an outside influence, what is the influence?

Do all of these smaller bodies roll along this space-time thing and than fall into the dent made by the larger mass?  What pulls this smaller mass into the dent?


Look, I could go on and on about how this space-time thing is just part of a theory and all of the explanations of exactly how and why this space-time thing bends are vague.  No mention of what created this thing.  Is it flat? if so then what is above it, below it.  In what medium does it exist?

If an object is curved its structure is cuved in a medium of some sort.  Space is curved in relation to what?
There is straight flat space and curved space?  Space actually changes shape so that points on it are moved to a different location in space.  The whole thing is absurd, and hard to accept as fact.

I'm not sure what the source of your difficulty is. Is it that you find the notion that matter "bends" space-time (or even the notion of space-time itself) hard to accept—harder to accept than, say, the notion that matter attracts matter by some unexplained, almost magical "action-at-a-distance" force? You seem to be wanting to see some kind of "absolute proof" that matter bends space-time. There is no such proof, nor will there ever be. The same statement applies to every scientific theory that ever was—and that ever will be. (If that's not the source of your difficulty, then perhaps your difficulty is as simple as a lack of understanding of precisely what it means to be a scientific theory.)

The solutions to the Einstein Field Equations are essentially descriptions of the geometry of space-time. These solutions (which provide the "how" space-time is curved—i.e., how it differs from Euclidean ("flat") space-time)—depend upon matter (mass and energy—the "what" that causes the curving); these solutions also determine how matter reacts to the curving it created. To again quote John Wheeler, "Matter tells space-time how to bend, and space-time tells matter how to move."

Nicholas wrote:

Dimensions curve.

Mitch Raemsch Twice Nobel Laureate 2008

Nicholas, please stop making unsupported claims. I can guarantee that you have never won a Nobel Prize. Specifically, the 2008 prize has not even been awarded and will not be awarded for many months.

I am getting many reports about your posts. Either contribute something of value, or I will begin deleting them.

Dimensions are expanding. It started at the Big Bang the beginning of time or time zero.