4 ms·
Hmm, if you look at another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971973 It seems like the point i
by AlexandrB 2y ago
Hmm, if you look at another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971973
It seems like the point is that the particle is actually not accelerating when it follows the one path through spacetime. It only accelerates when it's stopped by something (e.g. the surface of the earth).
- wrs 2y agoAnother angle that might help: Newton was correct when he said a particle with no forces on it would keep going in a straight line. He was just missing a dimension in his coordinate system. The geodesic is the straight line in spacetime. And mass distorts the spacetime metric (mostly time) in a nonlinear way, so when you project that straight line back into 3D space, it’s not linear, it’s a curve. An “acceleration” curve.