Question: How can space be bent by gravity?

Alice Harpole answered on 9 Mar 2016:

Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that mass bends the spacetime around it. The more compact (or dense) the mass is, the more spacetime will be bent. Gravity is what we call this bending of spacetime. You can think of an object being acted on by a gravitational force instead as the object moving through this bent spacetime, e.g. a black hole will bend the spacetime around it significantly, so anything that passes close to it will ‘roll’ towards it through this bent spacetime.