Alison Wilding
Oliver Tirré
Steven Pippin
Lea Andrews
The shortest distance between two points is generally considered as being a straight line and something fundamental to Euclidian geometry . Richard Feynman in his lectures on physics explains the concept of the analogue of a straight line in curved space-time as “the shortest distance between two points is one where the clock (time piece) records the longest possible time” ? To explain this somewhat counter intuitive notion we need to understand that the flow of time is not uniform and runs quicker the further away from a gravitational source, also referred to as gravitational time dilation. Therefore we could in theory take a route between two points which deviates (from the traditional straight line) in order to arrive at our destination quicker than if we had taken a purely direct route.