Albert Einstein’s General Relativity describes gravity as the motion of objects (stars, planets, black holes, ....) following curved lines in space or rather space-time. At the same time, however, mass causes the space-time to curve, and the more massive an object is, the more the space-time fabric curves around the location of the object. The best way to imagine it, is to think of space-time as a balloon, and all the celestial objects and elements as creatures crawling on it. A good portion of these creatures are not massive enough to make a difference to the balloon’s shape (Hydrogen gases and dust, for example), but if we had massive insects, they would push inward the balloon’s surface around themselves.
In General Relativity, that balloon is called the spacetime fabric, a 4-dimensional fabric defined by 3 spatial dimensions (X, Y, Z) and the time (T) dimension. All objects, elements, and energy (including light) travel through this fabric, and massive objects bend this fabric. But what is this fabric? Is it a thin layer of matter, like a plasma, but undetectable? If not, then what is it?
Most answers revolve around the notion that the spacetime fabric is not an actual fabric, but it's just the fundamental geometry of nature and the universe. As Pataphysicists, however, our curiosity is not satisfied with such an answer, and also as strong adepts of Fictional Science, we cannot abandon the search for a better solution, as imaginary as it may be.
To begin, our understanding through the Standard Model and the Dark Energy composition of the universe is that although we do not know its composition or even if it has one, spacetime fabric can expand at faster than the speed of light - reference hyperinflation - and contains about 2/3 of the Energy-Mass in the universe - Dark Energy. Pretty impressive for something that no one knows much about, but claims that it exists through scientific proofs!!
Could this spacetime fabric be the very God that humanity has stood by for over 3000 years? After all, it is mysterious, it has incredible energy, and it can do things that are scientifically impossible. Since we consider Einstein as the prophet of Big Bang singularity, we sought to discover his religious beliefs before we conclude on the question.
One of his quotes about the subject declares that: "Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." Does this imply that he believed in God? Well, not quite, but the notion of «Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control» could refer to spacetime fabric. As for Einstein’s religiousness, we refer to an excerpt of his letter to Max Born: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings.”
In conclusion, we see that Einstein did believe in an overarching unity that creates and rules, but that unity does not lend itself to petty observations of human actions and punishment or rewarding of our acts. It is not known if that unity existed before Big Bang, but since then it has revealed some of its mysteries, such as spacetime fabric, and has kept much of it hidden from us.
March 17, 2023, Cambridge,
Berta Seintan, PhD & Charlene Wardin, PhD