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General relativity describes gravity through the geometry of spacetime. Its metric tensor specifies distances, proper time measured by clocks, and the causal structure that limits communication. Matter and radiation affect this geometry through the Einstein field equations; freely falling test particles follow geodesics of the resulting geometry. A planet's orbit and a falling apple therefore belong to the same geometric story. The Newtonian limit recovers familiar Newtonian gravity when fields are weak and speeds are small compared with the speed of light. See David Tong's introduction to general relativity.

The most direct way to understand spacetime curvature is to compare neighboring freely falling bodies. Even when each body feels weightless, their separation can change: this is geodesic deviation, observed as a tidal force. Curvature concerns these relative measurements, rather than the shape of a drawing in an imagined surrounding space. A second accessible measurement is gravitational time dilation: identical clocks maintained at different heights accumulate different proper times. Together, tides and clocks turn an abstract geometry into laboratory questions.

In a static spacetime with $g_{tt}=-N^2$, a photon has conserved Killing energy $E=-p_t$. A static observer with four-velocity $N^{-1}{\partial }_t$ measures frequency proportional to $E/N$. Hence light emitted at one lapse and received at another obeys the displayed ratio. For $N=1+\Phi /c^2+O({\Phi }^2/c^4)$ it gives the weak-field shift $({\nu }_{\mathrm{r}}-{\nu }_{\mathrm{e}})/{\nu }_{\mathrm{e}}=({\Phi }_{\mathrm{e}}-{\Phi }_{\mathrm{r}})/c^2$. This local clock effect does not require light-ray bending.

An upward photon has lower received frequency when compared with the receiver's local clock: ${\Phi }_{\mathrm{r}}>{\Phi }_{\mathrm{e}}$ makes the shift negative. The corresponding upper clock runs faster in a comparison using the same static time coordinate. These are reciprocal descriptions of gravitational redshift and gravitational time dilation, not opposite predictions. A locally measured speed of light remains $c$.