I am more of the opinon that space and time (space-time)are simply curved near heavy masses.
Sure, in
General Relativity gravitation is just
spacetime being curved by mass.
Though care needs to be taken in saying "that space and time" are "being curved by mass" because the curvature of space (or as GR buffs like to say, the "space-like component of spacetime") is so small near the earth as to be completely unmeasurable.
One writer described the "bending of space" near the surface of the earth as increasing the effective diameter by about 1 cm in 12,740 km - one part in 1.27 billion. No-one can measure distance to this precision, but that difference in time measurement is significant.
And things try to go along “straight lines” but this so called curved space-time makes them move the way they do...
With such a minute bending of space, I had often wondered how GR explains gravitation, but roughly the explanation is that the "curving of time" bends future geodesics (your "straight lines") towards the mass.
I won't try to explain it further or I'll quickly get out of my depth - I can "picture it", but putting it into sensible words is a different matter.
I don't need all of your nonsical talk about ''forces'' and ''chairs'' and all, because i have a perfect visualisation about Einstein's hypothetical model and how objects travel along the lines of curved space-time.
Good for you, but the exact solution to Einstein's General Relative is not even possible.
It can be used to get an understanding of what is happening.
But then either
- approximations are used, for example the "Schwarzschild Metric" is the solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, subject to certain approximations or
- numerical solutions are used for particular situations.
But you are unable to make up your mind, which became so obvious in your conversations with Papa .
No, I am not "unable to make up my mind", but the GR solutions are quite impossible to use in "normal" situations.
(And I would not have a ghost of a chance of using them and neither would you or Papa Legba.)
What is very important is that the solution to that
Schwarzschild Metric near say the earth leads precisely to all of Newtonian Mechanics and more.
From that solution comes
Newton's Laws of Motion and Gravitation as well as
centripetal and
Coriolis effects.
So, guess what theory is used for virtually all calculations on earth and even in orbital mechanics -
Newton's Laws!
There are a few cases where the end result is "corrected for relativity" and that is much easier than using GR from the start.
And cosmologists need the "full-blown" GR, but let's not go there - it's all too "conjectural"
GR only gives a different result when velocities get to an appreciable fraction of that of light and/or when near large mass/energies.
Even near the Sun, the difference is so small that it was borderline whether Eddington could detect the bending of light, though that situation has changed drastically with radio-astronomy.
So, no I am not confused and using Newtonian gravitation in the exchanges with Papa Legba is quite valid.
In GR the "force" results when you prevent an object from following its
geodesic and
in Newtonian Gravitation the "force" results when you prevent an object from following its
free-fall.
They are essentially just two ways of looking at the same thing.