A Survey of Visualization Methods for Special Relativity

This paper provides a survey of approaches for special relativistic visualization. Visualization techniques are classified into three categories: Minkowski spacetime diagrams, depictions of spatial slices at a constant time, and virtual camera methods that simulate image generation in a relativistic scenario. The paper covers the historical outline from early hand-drawn visualizations to state-of-the-art computer-based visualization methods. This paper also provides a concise presentation of the mathematics of special relativity, making use of the geometric nature of spacetime and relating it to geometric concepts such vectors and linear transformations. 1998 ACM Subject Classification I.3.5 Computational Geometry and Object Modeling, J.2 Physical Sciences and Engineering Keywords and phrases Special Relativity, Minkowski, Spacetime, Virtual Camera Digital Object Identifier 10.4230/DFU.SciViz.2010.289

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: DAGSTUHL
• Authors: Daniel Weiskopf
• Keywords: DAGSTUHL 2010, Minkowski Spacetime Diagrams, Software Engineering, Special Relativistic Visualization, Special Relativity