David A. Nichols

Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia

The fundamental insights from relativity can be stated without using the advanced mathematics (differential geometry or tensor calculus) that underlie the formal articulation of the theory. Nevertheless, these concepts describing the fundamental properties of relativity are difficult to ponder given their abstract nature. For example, space and time are best described as a single four-dimensional continuum, spacetime; energy, momentum and stress all warp this spacetime fabric; and bodies move through this curved spacetime by following the closest analog to a straight-line path.1

This page is part of an ongoing effort2 to use visualizations to investigate and convey the nature of gravity in general relativity as a way to circumvent the difficulties of mathematics and the limitations of words in understanding the nature of general relativity. It builds upon several papers described in a research effort which is summarized in the following post on this website (here). It also relies upon modifications to the visualization method described in that post. These are summarized on the webpage, (Visualizations of Spacetime Curvature), and this new method made animating the spacetime geometry much more tractable.

  1. John Archibald Wheeler famously summarized the last two aspects of the theory as “Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve” assuming, of course, the reader was familiar with the notion of spacetime. ↩

  2. This material on this webpage was based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the NSF CAREER Award PHY-2439893. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. ↩