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Minkowski space is a pseudo-Euclidean space equipped with an isotropic quadratic form called the spacetime interval or the Minkowski norm squared. An event in Minkowski space for which the spacetime interval is zero is on the null cone of the origin, called the light cone in Minkowski space.
In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects, such as how different observers perceive where and when events ...
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.
The reason s 2 and not s is called the interval is that s 2 can be positive, zero or negative. Spacetime intervals may be classified into three distinct types, based on whether the temporal separation (c 2 Δt 2) or the spatial separation (Δr 2) of the two events is greater: time-like, light-like or space-like.
The quantity on the left is called the spacetime interval between events a 1 = (t 1, x 1, y 1, z 1) and a 2 = (t 2, x 2, y 2, z 2). The interval between any two events, not necessarily separated by light signals, is in fact invariant, i.e., independent of the state of relative motion of observers in different inertial frames, as is shown using ...
In general relativity, the metric tensor (in this context often abbreviated to simply the metric) is the fundamental object of study.The metric captures all the geometric and causal structure of spacetime, being used to define notions such as time, distance, volume, curvature, angle, and separation of the future and the past.
In the theory of Lorentzian manifolds, spherically symmetric spacetimes admit a family of nested round spheres.In such a spacetime, a particularly important kind of coordinate chart is the Schwarzschild chart, a kind of polar spherical coordinate chart on a static and spherically symmetric spacetime, which is adapted to these nested round spheres.
Spacetime topology is the topological structure of spacetime, a topic studied primarily in general relativity. This physical theory models gravitation as the curvature of a four dimensional Lorentzian manifold (a spacetime) and the concepts of topology thus become important in analysing local as well as global aspects of spacetime.