Nobody knows that the Earth is round.
Nobody knows that Space is flat.
Nobody knows that the Earth is actually a giant sphere that rotates and revolves around the Sun, that happens to be another giant sphere, which in turn revolves around the center of our galaxy that is a collection of many other spheres.

Because of this, everybody and nobody have never been very good friends. Even though they used to go to school together when they were still somebody.

However, we don't live in a perfect world, and usually nobody is right.

That is why nobody understood Einstein so well.

Space is flat. An empty box has a lot of space in it. If you looked inside this box, what would you see? Nothing. The space is so flat that you can't see it1, like a sheet of "GladWrap"2.

Now, let's say that the Earth is as round as a sphere. For the sake of science, let's pretend it's like a tennis ball. However, it would have to be a very large tennis ball. (Not to mention heavy, have a molten interior with a solid iron core, have wet and dry patches as well as billions of people living on it. But a tennis ball nevertheless.)

Now we take the sheet of GladWrap, we call space, and stretch it so that it is flat. Now we put the tennis ball, we call the Earth, in the middle of the sheet of GladWrap. What will happen is that the GladWrap will start to sag from the weight of the tennis ball3.

The GladWrap sags the most at the center of the tennis ball, and it gets less and less saggy the further away it is from the ball. So if a very small person were standing on the tennis ball, the GladWrap would be saggiest at the person's feet.

But what does it all mean?

The sagginess of the GladWrap is "Gravity". Gravity is what distorts space and time. Matter produces gravity. This does not mean that anti-matter produces anti-gravity. Because anti-matter still contains matter so it produces gravity, and anti-gravity, also known as the "Cosmological Constant" or "Inflation", is actually produced by space.

So how does gravity distort time? Well, if two people were running at the same speed, and then the gravity for one person suddenly becomes greater, that person will start to slow down because it would suddenly be more difficult to run. It is the same with time. If the time on two clocks were running at the same speed, and suddenly the gravity becomes greater for one clock, time would start to slow down for that clock.

So if you've been standing on your feet more than half your life, then time has passed more slowly for your feet than it has for your head. Thus making your head older than your feet.4

This is Einstein's theory of general relativity. Well, not really. But then again, in a perfect world, the name of the turtle is The Great A'Tuin.

1 Recently some scientists have claimed that the universe is flat. They are talking about a different kind of "flatness" here. There are three types of universes. "Open", "Closed" and "Flat". A "flat" universe means that the universe is neither expanding nor contracting. If it were "closed", the universe is contracting, and would collapse on itself to a single point and be destroyed in the worst possible way imaginable. If it were "open", the universe would expand forever. Everything would spread out, the stars will no longer be able to burn and the universe would be a frozen nothingness. Because scientist hate the idea of "what's the point of doing anything if it's not going to matter at the end anyway? ", they frantically try to prove that the universe will be around forever. But the chances that the universe is flat are about the same as trying to hit an ant on the moon with a bullet shot from a camera.

2 The plastic wrapping paper that is used to wrap food, but has a tendency to want to stick to itself, and any attempt to try and pull it back into a flat sheet is futile which is the reason why little sticky plastic balls are known to mysteriously appear at the bottom of garbage bins from time to time, or, if enough have formed in the bins, on the kitchen walls.

3 If the ball were heavy enough, the GladWrap will break, the tennis ball will fall, and there will be a hole. This is known as a "Black Hole". Only it's not really a hole. It's more of a sphere. It would have been called "The Malevolent Sphere of Encompassing Doom", but the Russian man who named it died before he had a chance to have it properly translated. The only thing that can escape from the Black Hole is "Darkness", because nothing travels faster than the speed of dark. Everyone knows that the speed of light may be fast, but darkness is already there before light is. This is something nobody knows.

4 Assuming that you don't take into account that the when a fetus is growing, the head is formed first and thus automatically making your head older by default.

5 Inspired by Terry Prachett


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