A new way to visualize General Relativity
Why Hacker News recommends it
Called the best visualization of general relativity by many commenters, who say it cleared up long-held misunderstandings of gravity.
What it is
ScienceClic explains why the rubber sheet analogy for general relativity is misleading and offers a new visualization that includes the curvature of time and shows gravity as motion through curved spacetime.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec zestyping · 2020-10 · on “Gravity is not a force – free-fall parabolas are straight lines in spacetime”
This video really cleared up a lot of misunderstandings for me: [this video] I had never visualized it this way in my head before, and it all makes a lot more sense now. Highly recommend!
Strong rec nemothekid · 2022-05 · on “PBS SpaceTime”
Science Asylum is great, but I dislike the 90s educational show presentation format. An absolute gem I've stumbled across is ScienceClic: [LINK] They have amazing presentations on Relativity, my favorite being: "A new way to visualize General Relativity" - [this video] "Hawking Radiation" - [LINK] Another, while heavier and less accessible channel is Physics Explained: [LINK] These are closer like lectures, but I enjoy them because they go into the histories of some of these experiments; and what the prevailing wisdom was around the time the experiments were performed: "What is the Ultraviolet Catastrophe?" - [LINK]
Strong rec nextaccountic · 2022-07 · on “Mass and angular momentum, left ambiguous by Einstein, get defined”
But under this point of view there's no force at all. Gravity doesn't exert a force on you, the movement under gravity is purely inertial. I know this is bonkers. Here's the video that made me finally understand it [this video] ( [LINK] is another good video from the same author)
Strong rec lahwran · 2022-07 · on “Ask HN: YouTube Channels for the Intellectually Curious”
scienceclic also comes in an english edition. hands down the best visualization of general relativity I've seen. [this video]
Recommends manigandham · 2020-10 · on “Gravity is not a force – free-fall parabolas are straight lines in spacetime”
That's linked at the bottom of the article. Another good video to visualize GR is this by ScienceClic: [this video]
Recommends ben_w · 2021-12 · on “Gravitational waves should permanently distort space-time”
The rubber sheet analogy is criticised for this exact reason. Here’s a different visualisation that starts with what’s wrong with the rubber sheet: [this video]
Recommends Amezarak · 2023-03 · on “Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment”
Sure, no doubt, a video can sometimes make things much clearer. A great example (to me) is this [1] for example. I had understood from the old illustrations that I was supposed to imagine something like that, but video makes it incredibly clear. The actual net impact of screens in classrooms, however, appears to me to be extremely negative, and I think learning outcomes bear that out. [1] [this video]
Recommends rfgplk · 2026-06 · on “Show HN: Gravity – interactive solar-system simulator, from Newton to Einstein”
Very nice, fairly efficient too. I don't like the explicit split of Newtonian and relativistic gravity, this is often how it's presented in educational content, but it creates too much confusion; for instance it gives the illusion that they are somehow separate theories even though Newtonian gravity is a limiting case of Einsteinian gravity when v << c and gravitational fields are weak (see Poissons eq for Newtons gravitational potential. Lastly, you should consider rendering spacetime similar to Alessandro Roussels spacetime visualization [this video] ; probably the best and most innovative one I've seen.