- #1
Truth_Seeker
- 6
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since the first moment I've started studying the theory of relativity i thought that the minkowski metric represents a flat spacetime (a 4D euclidean space) but while I was surfing the WWW , I arrived to an interactive applet the helps you visualise the idea of spacetime curvature is GR , here it is : http://www.adamtoons.de/physics/gravitation.swf
in this applet when i putted the "spherical mass" bar to zero , it should have given me a flat spacetime ... i can see the flatness is space but i see a curved path in time ... shouldn't it be flat in both space and time ??!
seeing this also made me remember an old question i had when i first started relativity , why do we use hyperbolic functions "sinh .. cosh ... etc" in the rotation equations of lorentz transformation instead of ordinary trigonometric functions ??
thanks in advance ...
in this applet when i putted the "spherical mass" bar to zero , it should have given me a flat spacetime ... i can see the flatness is space but i see a curved path in time ... shouldn't it be flat in both space and time ??!
seeing this also made me remember an old question i had when i first started relativity , why do we use hyperbolic functions "sinh .. cosh ... etc" in the rotation equations of lorentz transformation instead of ordinary trigonometric functions ??
thanks in advance ...