World line

The world line (or worldline) of an object is the path that an object traces in 4-dimensional spacetime. It is an important concept of modern physics, and particularly theoretical physics.

The concept of a "world line" is distinguished from concepts such as an "orbit" or a "trajectory" (e.g., a planet's orbit in space or the trajectory of a car on a road) by inclusion of the dimension time, and typically encompasses a large area of spacetime wherein paths which are straight perceptually are rendered as curves in spacetime to show their (relatively) more absolute position states—to reveal the nature of special relativity or gravitational interactions.

The idea of world lines was originated by physicists and was pioneered by Hermann Minkowski. The term is now used most often in the context of relativity theories (i.e., special relativity and general relativity).


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