Is this actually how gravity is illustrated?

Question

In general relativity, gravity is said to be caused by the curvature of space time. And there are examples that illustrate gravity such as this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTY1Kje0yLg, and many pictures online. But in these examples space time in essentially just a 2-D plane that sinks down when an object is placed on it. I guess you could say that in these examples gravity is portrayed to be a literal potential well in space time. Also, this is a man on Earth . This man could just jump off earth into space since he is above the potential well. Shouldn't the proper illustrations have potential wells all around the object?

Answer 1

The video you link to is a good illustration of a model of how gravity behaves in two dimensional space cuts of reality, in time. Your diagram above reduces the space dimensions by one and fixes time to t=t1. In doing that the rotational direction is lost. The man can jump ( we do send rockets off the earth after all, no? ) given the energy to do so.

It is illustrating how thinking in terms of potential, as we do in Newtonian physics, is equivalent mathematically in thinking in terms of space distortion.