Understanding Spacetime: Exploring Its Reality and Conceptualization in Physics

[madness]

In GR, mass causes an object to follow a curved path. This does not mean that spacetime is some kind of physical thing which is curved. What has virtual particles and dark energy got to do with whether spacetime is real? Nobody said space was empty. Of course in GR space and time behave differently than in Newtonian physics, distances and times become shorter and longer because of mass. This does not imply that there is some kind of fabric which is distorted.

 

[shamrock5585]

keep in mind also that in Newtonian physics the math all works out perfectly for small distance and short times, relative to the universe... this is why special relativity includes spacetime. At rediculously high speeds I.E. energies and really large amounts of mass we start to see that Newtonian physics ends up being scewed by alot. what einstein did was describe spacetime as a fabric so that people could picture what it was... but can you picture a four dimensional object... spacetime isn't really a fabric or an object... but objects follow trajectories on it, and really large objects curve and shape it. By thinking of it as a slate on which everything occurs we can get the math correct when applied to physics of any scale. Its like a 3 dimensional painting which is erased and repainted every instant.

 

[madness]

I agree with everything you wrote there but I think it is important to keep in mind that the whole "fabric" view of spacetime is just a way of looking at it, and not a view demanded by the maths of the theory. It is ok to think of spacetime in this way I think it is very much an interpretation of the theory rather than a scientific fact.