Spacetime Light Cones

thingiverse

I’m Katharine Downey, a student at George Mason University taking Math 401: Mathematics Through 3D Printing in the Fall 2019 semester. This object is my print from a project in the class where symmetry and/or linear or non-linear transformations were to be displayed. The object, displaying symmetry, may at first appear as two hollow cones, but they are in fact a 3D illustration of a concept in Minkowski spacetime known commonly as light cones. It illustrates the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams such as light cones can be used to visualize relativistic effects. The geometry of the spacetime light cones is invariant under a few geometric transformations, including reflection, helical, and scaling. Although the upper cone is what’s known as the future light cone and the lower cone is known as the past light cone, the geometry remains the same even though the two cones deal with difference points in the spacetime timeline.