Is Gravity acting upwards or downwards?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

---

This may be totally wrong and just confuse things further, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Someone smarter than me can correct me if I'm wrong.

An object's gravitational field is less a function of matter and more a function of space-time. Objects with mass warp space-time just by being in it.

This "slants" ALL of space-time toward the object in such a way that other objects will be inclined to "roll" toward it. If all objects in the Universe suddenly lost their motion and momentum, they would immediately start rolling toward each other until everything kind of crashed in on itself somewhere in the middle.

There's an experiment on YouTube I saw a science class doing where they stretch out a piece of lycra and place various round objects on it to see the patterns they make as they roll. With the right combination of weights and objects, they could create complex orbit patterns where two marbles (for instance) would orbit each other closely while simultaneously orbiting a much larger object. It's a pretty cool demonstration of the principle I'm describing. Basically, gravity isn't exactly pushing or pulling one way or another. It's more like we're resting on a table where EVERY object on the table tilts the whole table in toward itself. Only we're not resting, we're hurtling outward at high speeds.

I have to stress that this is my limited, layman's understanding of how this happens. It probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

---

I always found the rubber sheet thing very confusing.  Basically,  the 'warping' of space-time by matter cannot really be displayed as such.  I thought that maybe it could be shown better with a three-dimensional Euclidian grid then just pick a point and pull everything to it.  I have tried on a couple of occasions to do that in a 3-D modeling program, but I am not very good at 3-D modeling.  All I have is Bryce 3D.

Back to gravity.  In reality, if something is in freefall, it is stationary with respect to space-time and that is the natural state of anything.  All other forces disrupt this natural state.  In effect, we are hurtling outward from the earth at 32ft/s/s with respect to space-time.

And to the OP, IMHO, we are being pushed toward the earth rather than pulled toward the earth.  Just like a vacuum, you do not get sucked into space, you get pushed.

You're probably going to find me disturbingly stupid when you find out that i was saying that we weren't being pushed of pulled towards the earth but away from the earth.
Yup,i said that we were being pushed away from earth.

I thought like that only because i visualized gravity as a streched rubber sheet,when i put two objects on top of it the heavier object would come down faster than the lighter object.According to that scenario,if two objects were to be pushed on to the rubber sheet and then released the rubber sheet would push the lighter object faster than the heavier object,so i figured if gravity might've been pulling or pushing stuff toward the earth lighter objects would fall faster than heavier objects but that's not the case so i thought maybe gravity is pushing stuff away from the earth,like a rubber sheet,Argh,i don't even know anymore.I'm going to college and listen to stuff i already know so that i can feel smarter again,goddammit.