Physicists Discover New Way to Visualize Warped Space and Time

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2011) — When black holes slam into each other, the surrounding space and time surge and undulate like a heaving sea during a storm. This warping of space and time is so complicated that physicists haven't been able to understand the details of what goes on -- until now.

We've found ways to visualize warped space-time like never before," says Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

By combining theory with computer simulations, Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech, Cornell University, and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in South Africa have developed conceptual tools they've dubbed tendex lines and vortex lines.


Two doughnut-shaped vortexes ejected by a pulsating black hole. Also shown at the center are two red and two blue vortex lines attached to the hole, which will be ejected as a third doughnut-shaped vortex in the next pulsation. (Credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration)


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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110411092750.htm

[buddysmellgood]

1. That's exactly what it looks like under the hood of the Tardis.

[whoneedstickets]

2. Looks great, let's see it in four dimensions!

[notesdev]

3. Check back tomorrow

;)

[damntexdem]

4. Isn't that what we did back in the 60s? Aciduously.

;-)

(By the way, the spellchecker doesn't show my misspelling of assiduous to be wrong. Very interesting.)

[Wilms]

10. The spell checker doesn't recognize Spirograph.

:rofl:

[Ian David]

5. It's astounding...

[laconicsax]

6. You mean when I was playing with a spirograph, I was really visualizing spacetime?

No wonder I love thinking about mass warping spacetime and trying to visualize it!

[tridim]

7. Looks like a large scale fractal representation of atomic structure.

With jumping electron levels and everything. I'm pretty sure Leonard Susskind agrees.

Unification is somewhere in the math, I'm sure of it.

[felix_numinous]

8. K&R Beautiful- spirograph theory.

[Orsino]

9. ...with a Spirograph. n/t