General Relativity movies
Here are some simple movies I made with my modified version of Povray 3.6. These movies show how some simple objects might appear when photographed in a strong gravitational field (e.g. in the presence a black hole). This material is pet project of mine. I haven't dressed up the Povray code with all the (reasonable) caveats required by the Povray team. So I can't release the code through this web site. But if you contact me...well, let's talk.
- Here we have a black hole passing across our line of sight to a distant (fake) nebula. Quicktime or Windows media movie
- A silly example of how the Earth would appear if it happened to have black hole at its core that grows steadily in time (don't worry, this will never happen to us). Quicktime or Windows media movie
- You are looking down a torus (a hollow doughnut). A black hole is located at the centre of the torus and its size grows steadily with time. Can you explain the what you see? (the movie is correct!). The second (yellow) torus is there just for visual effect, it's supposed to help you see what's happening. The blue plug is there to stop light rays completing circuits of the torus (what would the picture look like without the blue plug?). Quicktime or Windows media movie
- A Morris-Thorne wormhole. This idea was used in the film Contact starring Jodie Foster. This wormhole connects two very different regions of spacetime. The journey through the wormhole takes little time yet we appear to have travelled vast distances. This is one way to build a time-machine (a story for another day, or have I already said that?). Quicktime or Windows media movie (big 26M)
Special Relativity movies
I also have some movies showing effects particular to Special Relativity. They can be found here.