Relativity visualized

The theory of relativity holds a certain fascination for many people. At the same time it is often regarded as very abstract and difficult to understand.

Part of the difficulties in understanding relativity are due to the fact that relativistic effects contradict everyday experience. Motion, for example, is a familiar process and everybody "knows from experience" that it entails neither time dilation nor length contraction. A flight with half the speed of light could correct this misjudgement but is not on offer.

A possible alternative are simulations. Images, films and virtual reality let us in a sense experience relativistic flights, gravitational collapse, compact objects and other extreme conditions.

News

18 Apr 2008 13:00 GMT
New contribution: Brightness and color of rapidly moving objects: The visual appearance of a large sphere revisited
An object at relativistic speed is seen as both rotated and distorted when it is large or close by so that it subtends a large solid angle. This is a consequence of the aberration effect and is obtained by purely geometric considerations. In this paper it is pointed out and illustrated that a photorealistic image of such an object would actually be dominated by the Doppler and searchlight effects, which would be so prominent as to render the geometric apparent shape effectively invisible. Brightness and color of rapidly moving objects: The visual appearance of a large sphere revisited.

14 Mar 2008 23:00 GMT
New contribution: Flight through a Wormhole
Wormholes are traversable connections between two universes or between two distant regions of the same universe. They are a popular feature of science fiction stories where they allow travelling to extraterrestrial cultures. This contribution shows a flight through the wormhole that connects Tübingen University with Boulogne sur Mer in the north of France.
Flight through a Wormhole.

More news in the news archive.

Overview

What do you find on this site? Visualizations and model experiments. This site is about a visual and intuitive approach to the theory of relativity.

What do you not find here? The basics of the special theory of relativity as explained in the schoolbooks.

Where should you best begin to read? The material on this site is sorted into three subject areas. Each of them has one or two main articles that introduce the respective subject.

More in: Overview or directly in the following thematic overviews:

Visualization of special relativity

The speed of light, nearly 300 000 km/s or just over one billion km/h is very much larger than any speed that we know from everyday life.

In the computer simulation we can "experience" high speed motion: We observe objects that move by at nearly the speed of light. Or from the other point of view: We travel at nearly the speed of light and take a look-around.

More in: Overview visualization of special relativity (in German)

Visualization of general relativity

The general theory of relativity is the theory of gravitation. Its peculiar predictions like the deflection of light, again, are not part of our everyday life: The gravity of the earth is simply too weak.

In the computer simulation we travel to black holes and neutron stars. Pictures and movies show what we should see in these high-gravity places.

More in: Overview visualization of general relativity (in German)

Model experiments on the general theory of relativity

The second main topic of the contributions on the general theory of relativity is a model experiment on the concept of "curved space".

More in: Overview model experiments on the general theory of relativity (in German)

Project description and teaching philosophy

"Space Time Travel" is a project on teaching relativity. It is realized by the physics education group within the department of astronomy and astrophysics of Tübingen university.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of relativity was considered to be one of the most difficult and abstract theories in science. This is expressed e. g. in Einstein's famous question "Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me?". Or in the anecdote on Sir Arthur Eddington, who, when someone remarked that he probably was one of the three men in the world who really understood relativity theory, replied that he did not know who might be the third.

More in: Project description and teaching philosophy (in German)