3 ms·

No, the space being shown here remains entirely flat. There is length contraction and time dilation at play, but that’s a uniform effect. The reason the image

No, the space being shown here remains entirely flat. There is length contraction and time dilation at play, but that’s a uniform effect. The reason the image appears distorted is because we have more time to catch up to light rays emitted from farther away. This visual phenomenon is called Terrell rotation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation It’s based entirely on special relativity—not to be confused with general relativity, which deals with curved spacetime in the presence of gravitational fields.

dang 5y ago
Submitted title was "Website to observe how space is curved the closer you get to the speed of light". We got complaints about that, so have reverted to the web page's own title. "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yawaramin 5y ago
  HN really needs a sub-title in posts for explanatory reasons. Often just a title is not enough to understand what it is.
  - krapp 5y ago
    No... if people want the context of the title explained, they can find that out by reading the article.