Question:
I have read a book entitled Blackholes, Wormholes, and Time
machines. In it, it claims that according to physics, time and space are
both somehow bendable. What proof do we have that time really exists in
more than our mental perception of the world around us? Is there any
proof other than theoretical equations that could lead me to believe in
things such as bendable space and time?
Replies:
There is both a large body of theoretical and experimental evidence
supporting the curvature of space-time.
The book "A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime" by John Archibald Wheeler
tells the story elegantly without any mathematics much above the Pythagorean
Theorem. Wheeler is one of the preeminent experts on gravity and relativity,
but he tells the story of Gravity in a spellbinding fashion.
I know this sounds like an advertisement, but his book deserves
reading by any student taking high school physics.
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