History & Science

I’ve always liked depictions of space-time like this one; it’s a nice way to imagine the orbits of planets around stars, moons around planets, etc. … if you replaced the image of the Earth in this photo with the sun, imagine dropping a coin or a ball into the space on an angle and you can see how the orbits occur as a result of the curvature of space-time created by mattter. It also helps you imagine how the planets appear to move faster as they get closer to the sun (ie. Mars): Newton’s second law, if I remember correctly.
It’s a bit more complicated than this sparse description I’ve outlined, but it’s picturesque at the least!

Space-time:

In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. By combining space and time into a single manifold, physicists have significantly simplified a large number of physical theories, as well as described in a more uniform way the workings of the universe at both the supergalactic and subatomic levels. In classical mechanics, the use of Euclidean space instead of spacetime is appropriate, as time is treated as universal and constant, being independent of the state of motion of an observer. In relativistic contexts, however, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the rate at which time passes depends on an object’s velocity relative to the speed of light and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields, which can slow the passage of time. - enWikipedia

image created by enWiki:user:Johnstone