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The 45° diagonal lines represent the worldlines of two photons passing through the origin at time = The slope of these worldlines is 1 because the photons advance one unit in space per unit of time. Two events, A {\displaystyle {\text{A}}} and B , {\displaystyle {\text{B}},} have been plotted on this graph so that their coordinates may be ...
The dashed line is the spacetime trajectory ("world line") of the particle. The balls are placed at regular intervals of proper time along the world line. The solid diagonal lines are the light cones for the observer's current event, and they intersect at that event. The small dots are other arbitrary events in the spacetime.
Figure 2–4. The light cone centered on an event divides the rest of spacetime into the future, the past, and "elsewhere" In Fig. 2–4, event O is at the origin of a spacetime diagram, and the two diagonal lines represent all events that have zero spacetime interval with respect to the origin event.
World lines of freely falling particles/objects are called geodesics. In special relativity these are straight lines in Minkowski space. Often the time units are chosen such that the speed of light is represented by lines at a fixed angle, usually at 45 degrees, forming a cone with the vertical (time) axis.
Light cone coordinates can also be generalized to curved spacetime in general relativity. Sometimes calculations simplify using light cone coordinates. See Newman–Penrose formalism. Light cone coordinates are sometimes used to describe relativistic collisions, especially if the relative velocity is very close to the speed of light.
The Vertical-horizontal illusion is the tendency for observers to overestimate the length of a vertical line relative to a horizontal line of the same length. Vista paradox: Visual tilt effects: Wagon-wheel effect: White's illusion: Wundt illusion: The two red vertical lines are both straight, but they may look as if they are bowed inwards to ...
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In geometry, a straight line, usually abbreviated line, is an infinitely long object with no width, depth, or curvature, an idealization of such physical objects as a straightedge, a taut string, or a ray of light. Lines are spaces of dimension one, which may be embedded in spaces of dimension two, three, or