Abstract
Einstein’s general theory of relativity postulates that gravitational effects may be explained by the curvature of spacetime (modeled by a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold) and that gravity should not be regarded as a force in the conventional sense. To get a preliminary idea of what is involved, we shall follow the practice of a number of authors1 and consider ants crawling over a curved surface, namely the skin of an apple.
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References
Notably Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, on whose well-known illustration our Fig. 2.1 is based. See Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, 1973, §1.1.
See, for example, Goldstein, Poole, and Safko, 2002, §2–6, or Symon, 1971, §9-6.
See Damour and Deruelle, 1986.
See, for example, Goldstein, Poole, and Safko, 2002, §4–10.
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Foster, J., Nightingale, J.D. (2006). The spacetime of general relativity and paths of particles. In: A Short Course in General Relativity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-27583-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-27583-3_3
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
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