I have such a hard time accepting that this isn't something almost everyone knows. It's such basic knowledge, it's taught in schools and mentioned often enough in any kind of media etc. Seeing this thread is like finding out people don't know that fries are made of potatoes.
I can't speak for anyone else but I definitely didn't have gravity explained in school as the rotation of an objects 4-vector due to a temporal gradient.
The understanding I got from school was that gravity might be some kind of force and basically one mass attracts other mass, like electric potentials do
Keep in mind, that was 20 years ago. Our understanding might have changed and tbh I wouldn't expect a high school physics teacher to be on the bleeding edge of research in all physics fields
If this surprised you...You're in for a world of hurt when you realize how little we all know
Start to specialize in one thing like a trade or a hobby and you'll find the world chock full of information with no possibility for anyone to learn or even familiarize themselves with
Hey now, I wouldn't say that. I'm a super-interested individual when it comes to physics, astronomy and the like and I feel like I have a decent grasp on the lay-versions of what we seem to know as of 2024. But I also know that I'm constantly on the hunt for new information, documentaries, etc. on the subject. Ain't no way that "almost everyone" is putting nearly the same amount of time being interested in this subject matter. This isn't pop culture (though maybe it should be😉).
I'm sure I've read about this before but I couldn't say I really "know it". It's not something that ever comes up in my day to day life so I haven't internalized it and probably wouldn't be able to answer correctly if someone asked me how gravity works. I'd probably give the if first explanation about objects attracting each other with mass because that's much more intuitive to me for whatever reason.