Not sure if this will help but;
You can get a more accurate picture from the famous "rubber sheet" analogy by picturing what it would look like if you are looking straight down from above it. This has two major advantages, the first being that the object which appears spherical in the original diagram would look like a disk when viewed from directly above. This makes the illustration more integrated since it is a two-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface. The other advantage is that, from this angle, the grid lines on the flat surface all appear to curve toward the object from all directions. This is the proper meaning of the rubber sheet analogy, it is a two-dimensional representation of what happens in three dimensions.
On the two-dimensional surface, the disk (as it appears from this angle) represents the heavy ball in the original diagram, perhaps a cannon ball. A smaller ball (like a marble) that tries to roll passed this large ball can only go by in one of the directions afforded by the two dimensions of its environment. That is, it can only go in front or behind or to the left or the right of the cannon ball. But whichever way it's going, its trajectory will be curved toward the cannon ball. Now, even though you can only see the lines running along the two directions (left to right or front and back), in your mind you are aware that the curvature of these lines is a result of the surface being bent in a third direction, up and down.
This, then, is what gravity does to three-dimensional space. It causes a curve in a fourth direction which is at a 90o angle to the three with which we are commonly familiar.
The two-dimensional curved surface is supposed to be analogous to three-dimensional curved space; we can't visualize three-dimensional curved space directly very well. It is not correct to think of objects like the Sun as spheres sitting on top of the 2D surface, though; the 2D surface is space, and all objects lie within space. So within this analogy, the Sun would have to be a 2D disc sitting at the bottom of the 2D "well".
An illustration of the way 'warping' occurs is to consider setting out on a journey into into space. If you set out in a straight line you wouldn't expect to end up where you started from would you?
However, mass can warp space time, as illustrated by the rubber sheet analogy, and if warped enough you can end up back where you started. It is like a minute creature walking on the surface of a large sphere - it looks flat on his scale, but having walked onwards in a straight line, it would end up back where it started.
Light follows a straight line path in space, but if mass distorts that spacetime, then it follows a curved path - ie it appears to be attracted by mass.
The warping effect idea can also solve the 'action at a distance' problem of how masses can interact over large distances. There is no Force, just curved paths!
[This message has been edited by JIM, 11-09-2003]
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