Hi all,
Has anyone managed to find a mental trick to assist in visualising a curved space? I find it pretty difficult, as it takes a mammoth effort of will not to superimpose a euclidian geometry over the top of my so called curved space.
My thought experiment is the classic surface of a sphere with a triangle with three 90 degree angles... I find it difficult to change my thinking to 'see' the lines of the triangle as one dimensional and not 2 dimensional in euclidian space. So to my cartesian mind, its not 'really' a triangle.
My ultimate objective is to finally get a grip on the basic maths of general relativity. I've been reading through an excellent NASA primer on tensors, which I studied at university in Applied maths - somehow they managed to remove all practical application from them - so as a result I've completely forgotten the math.
This book is on my wish list too
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-T...=24ZKNZ3CHQBTP