Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Lorentz transform of world line

Lorentz transform of world line

Animation of an accelerating particle travelling along its worldline. The dots on the line are spaced at regular proper time intervals. The diagonal lines show the particle's light cone at that time. The other dots are random events.

This animation by User:Cyp is just an amazing addition to special relativity, where it has a much more complete caption. It illustrates very well how the proper time of an accelerating observer changes with velocity. Several people have praised this image on Talk:Special relativity so I definitely feel it fits the useful to the article criterion.

• Nominate and support. - — Laura Scudder ☎ 18:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Science is FUNdamental. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 02:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Very cool. Hurray for science.--ragesoss 02:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Very, very awesome. This is all you need for a basic non-mathematical course in Special Relativity :) — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-02-3 05:32
• I'll support it, but I won't try to understand it. - JPM | 06:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
• Was going to oppose because it was unexplained, but it's explained in depth on the special relativity page. (Not that I now understand what's going on, but still. :P) Support. Zafiroblue05 22:37, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support very cool. --Lewk_of_Serthic 00:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. As above. enochlau (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Good one! Including the source-code is a nice touch. You could copy some explanatory text over to the image page from the article, so people who get there via some other means (like FP visible, or something) won't feel quite as lost. Mstroeck 01:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I love how the source code was included, and only uses standard libraries. I would be interested in knowing what was used to convert the pgm files into the gif file though.--Lewk_of_Serthic 03:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • convert lor*.pgm lor.gif (convert is part of ImageMagick.) Κσυπ Cyp   13:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks --Lewk_of_Serthic 00:17, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Very nice. Eteru 10:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - and good for you if you have enough brainpower to acctually understand it. Renata 02:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. A good example of what can be accomplished with animation. --Janke | Talk 07:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Calderwood 16:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Snargle 06:14, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support, excellent way to illustrate a complicated subject, which is something all FP should do. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Marvelous. –Joke 04:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose the picture illustrates too many things at once to my taste. (the movement of the observer, the change in view of spacetime, observers trajectory) In my opinion it is easier to understand the transforms than to understand this picture. Use of the image in Special relativity page obscures the thing. Nice work with computing and animation, though. --Wikimol 08:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC) (Contarary to above stated comments about complicated subject, the relativist boost transform is easy and intuitive.)
  • The boosts themselves are easy to understand, but, having taught the subject, I can say the counter-intuitive consequences are not at all so easy for students. What I love about this one is really how much there is in one diagram. — Laura Scudder ☎ 15:36, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - A great illustration of a scientific principle. Lejean2000 07:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:10, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
• Weak support. This representation is very cool. I think it would be less confusing if there were longer straight-line stretches. --Doradus 14:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Promoted Image:Lorentz transform of world line.gif Raven4x4x 05:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)