system
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human
Gravity. Gravitons and The Einstein model?

Hi! 

I recently read about the three other forces exchanging values by "trading" particles and that it is thought gravity work the same way by trading gravitons. 

I have a hard time reconciling this, or imagining it with the Einstein model where space is curved and how that causes attractions. 

Does one exclude the other or am I just confusing the concepts? 

Would really appreciate if someone could explain a bit how this works together. Thank you!
gpt
Particles being traded back and forth isn't really a good description of what's happening (magnets do not look like lightbulbs). There are fields that permeate the universe, and when sources of these fields undergo a discrete change, that change propagates through the field. So, two objects can interact with each other through perturbations in a field, and these perturbations are described by same languages as excitations (particles), but it's not like electrons are literally playing photon ping pong.

Anyway, imagine you have an atom with an electric field around it, and the electron in the atom undergoes a transition to a lower state. Its electric field is now different, and information that this field is different can only propagate outwards at the speed of light, and this discrete propagating change in the electromagnetic field is the photon. The same would be the case for the gravitational field around an object, except the gravitational field here is the curvature of spacetime. If its source undergoes a discrete change, the gravitational field changes discretely, and this is called a graviton. If the change in the source is not discrete, it would be an electromagnetic wave in the first case and a gravitational wave in the second, as are emitted by rotating electrons in a magnetic field or co-orbiting neutron stars.