View Full Version : Kruskal and Penrose diagrams for a Minkosky spacetime
JeffOCA
Oct28-09, 07:55 PM
Hello
I'm looking for diagrams (Kruskal and Penrose diagrams) representing Minkosky spacetime.
I found two diagrams at http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html (the two first diagrams of the page). Do they represent a Minkowski spacetime ?
Thanks,
Jeff
PeterDonis
Oct30-09, 10:34 AM
The first diagram looks OK, but I haven't heard the term "Kruskal diagram" used to describe such a diagram of Minkowski spacetime; I've only heard "Kruskal diagram" used to describe a diagram using Kruskal coordinates for black holes (which looks somewhat similar).
The second diagram looks similar to the one on the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_diagram) on Penrose diagrams; however, I've often seen it drawn with only the right half of the diagram, as on this page (http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~pvarni/TC/node48.html). The latter form makes more sense to me since, as I understand it, Penrose diagrams are supposed to represent a "spherical" sort of coordinate system, where the spacelike dimension is radius r. In this interpretation having a left half of the diagram would correspond to a negative radius, which doesn't make sense.
vBulletin® v3.7.6, Copyright ©2000-2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.