The Spacetime Metric
Lecture 341 min 34 sec

General relativity

Geometry responds to mass and energy.

Follow the conceptual path from the equivalence principle to curved spacetime, geodesics, and Einstein's field equation.

Season 1 · remastered lesson

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41 min 34 sec · Captions: English · Español · Português · Français · Polski

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Visual explanation

Explore the central idea

Motion is optional · static explanation always available

Light rays bending through a denser region of vacuum near a mass.
Curved spacetime can also be pictured as a changing optical medium. The picture is an analogy; the measurable bending is real.

Read alongside

The Metric Tensor, Warp Drives, and Wormholes

The experiments, equations, and original papers behind the lesson.

Open the companion chapter →