We are not contained within an invisible, rigid scaffolding: we are immersed in a gigantic, flexible mollusk (the metaphor is Einstein’s). The sun bends space around itself, and Earth does not circle around it drawn by a mysterious distant force but runs straight in a space that inclines, like a bead that rolls in a funnel: there are no mysterious forces generated by the center of the funnel; it is the curved nature of the funnel wall that guides the rotation of the bead. Planets circle around the sun, and things fall, because space around them is curved (figure 3.6).
