Maybe? That's one theory - but what is "spacetime", and what does it mean to "bend", or "fall into" something like that? In many ways we've just given things names as if that suddenly means they're understood.
And even then how can that be measured and proven vs other theories? Is it some other mechanism that simplifies to "close enough" that it measures similarly? We didn't really see the effects of relativity until we got to a sufficient accuracy of measurement, Newtonian mechanics was sufficient to explain things to the accuracy they could reproduce for a very long time.
Einstein couldn't have done anything like what he published if he didn't have evidence from new (at the time) equipment suggesting there was something wrong with the current model. And then testing proposed new models against those same measurements.
It was less of a counterexample and more of an inaccuracy. It wasn't immediately obvious as to whether the theory was at fault or our measurements or even knowledge of celestial objects (e.g. maybe Mercury had some nearby object that was changing its orbit).
Also, there wasn't any alternative, so a theory that explains almost everything is going to be accepted. Modern theories are also accepted if they explain things with more accuracy or over wider ranges than alternatives - often it's the shortcomings of theories that gives us clues as to a better theory. (e.g. the ultraviolet catastrophe)
I've always been a bit flummoxed we haven't expanded a ton on this given how long it's been.
I'm not sure if it's wrong or right, and not smart enough to posit much, other than it -feels- wrong. But it wouldn't take a ton to convince me otherwise.
You'd think by now we'd have more supporting evidence of such a concept.
Do you mean evidence for general relativity? Because there's a lot: gravitational waves, black holes, gravitational redshift, the bending of light by gravity, the expansion (or contraction, depending on density) of the universe, are all new phenomena predicted by GR and experimentally verified
Oh I meant expanded it down, if that makes any sense, applying it to more things that we'd normally learn in high school.
At least in my case, you're taught gravity as this standalone force, and even the Newtonian idea in high school. Not until later college do they then throw that away and go into gr and the ideas you mention.
Though I guess this is more a failing of public education than science at large.
Ah, right. I would guess that's because it's just a much more complicated theory, and is well-approximated by Newtonian gravity for weak fields, e.g. like in the solar system. So applying GR to more everyday phenomena would just be a much more complicated way of saying almost the same thing.
GR is written in the language of differential geometry, and before even beginning you need a good grasp of Newtonian gravity, special relativity, multivariable calculus, and ideally electromagnetism too, so it needs a fair bit of preparation. And in fact the methods of Newtonian mechanics aren't thrown away, but incorporated into the more general framework. In that sense Newtonian mechanics is a conceptual foundation for GR, so that's why it's still taught first at school
And even then how can that be measured and proven vs other theories? Is it some other mechanism that simplifies to "close enough" that it measures similarly? We didn't really see the effects of relativity until we got to a sufficient accuracy of measurement, Newtonian mechanics was sufficient to explain things to the accuracy they could reproduce for a very long time.
Einstein couldn't have done anything like what he published if he didn't have evidence from new (at the time) equipment suggesting there was something wrong with the current model. And then testing proposed new models against those same measurements.