Comment on Do straight lines and flat planes exist in nature?
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months agoThere is no absolute frame of reference!
Light travels mathematically straight in one frame of reference but curved in another. Both are correct. You use mathematical transforms to map one coordinate system onto another in the same way you can map a mathematical straight line into curved geometry.
www.einstein-online.info/en/…/equivalence_light/
Look at the example they gave of light in an accelerating elevator (which is actually an example from Einstein book on relativity). One has straight light and the other is curved. Both reference frames are correct.
bitwaba@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There’s no absolute frame refrence in physics. We’re talking math theory here.
Light in an accelerating elevator is physics. Light in an anything is physics.
xkcd.com/435/
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The math that describes light in one reference frame is a mathematically perfect straight line. In a different reference frame the math that describes light is curved.
Just like a straight line in one coordinate system can be transformed into a curved line in another system.
bitwaba@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You’re just repeating yourself. It doesn’t make you right.
A straight line in a curved space that adheres to the curved space is still a curved line. An actual straight line exists between the two same points that is shorter than the path light would take. That is the mathematical minimum distance.