gee...you ARE getting close, Amos.... ;>)...but even that bowl of water metaphor is dangerous, as it tends to give substance TO space.

I know...lots of debate over whether 'space' is curved...positively, negatively, or just flat. Some of those theories and equations require one or the other. .....Now I wonder what 'shape' space might have been one second before the 'big bang'.(if there was one)....and if that shape changed a few seconds after the big bang. Well, what I really wonder is whether 'space' makes any sense without things 'in' it.

Was there at some 'time', NO-thing? And if so, was there any space to be curved? Is 'space' only a name for that not-solid area between the solid stuff we care about and can weigh, measure and take pictures of?
I am, of course, heading in my usual direction of wondering just how our obvious need to name certain aspects of whatever passes for reality also affects how we construct theories about the ultimate nature of things.

" Most pure-physics models are pretty dull about this.."

Yep...kinda dull. It is a lot more interesting to manipulate terminology and imagine META-physical realms where dimensions and planes of existence and entire universes can be tossed about with impunity. Entire religions have been built on these imaginary realms...(Oahspe, Urantia). We make fun of them, but talk seriously of wormholes into other universes where physical laws are 'different'.

It's an interesting feeling to have evolved into a being with a physical brain complex enough to ask these questions and wonder ....ummm...how we can ask these questions! Just being able to contemplate our own existence seems to imply ALL the other questions - even the ones we can't answer. "Can God make a weight he can't lift?"...Can Man ask a question he can't, by definition, ever answer?.......me, I suspect he sure enuf can....