The Bending of Time

"Spacetime is usually explained by asking you to imagine something flat but pliant - a mattress, say, or a sheet of stretched rubber- on which is resting a heavy round object, such as an iron ball. The weight of the iron ball causes the material on which it is sitting to stretch and sag slightly. This is roughly analogous to the effect that a massive object such as the sun (the iron ball) has on spacetime (the material): it stretches and curves and warps it. Now if you roll a smaller ball across the sheet it tries to go in a straight line as required by Newton's laws of motion, but as it nears the massive object and the slope of the sagging fabric, it rolls downward, inelutably drawn to the more massive object. This is gravity - a product of the bending of spacetime." (126)

This theory was proposed by Einstein, arguably one of the most influential and best known scientists ever. The reason I wanted to blog about this is not just because it's an interesting proposal, but the idea of curiosity. Where would we be without curiosity? If people were never curious, we would unarguably not be where we are today. If people were never curious we would never had had the invention of fire, or the wheel, or the cell phone. The question 'what if?' is the driving force behind the social and economical evolution of the human race.

I guess by realizing how curious Einstein was is what led him to his success, much like most other successful people. These types of people often ask 'what if we did this to make that better?'. I think that society has done a good job at ramming the question 'what if' into our heads. 'What if you could make your life easier', 'what if you could look better', 'what if you could save money', 'what if you could make more money'. All of these questions promise the idea of success or happiness in one way or another, and the curiosity behind the question is what drives us to make a change to something in some shape or form.