← Back to General Relativity & Quantum Cosmology gr-qc
How do you actually measure distances and speeds in curved spacetime?
Dmitri Lebedev, Kayll Lake
May 22, 2026
Measuring something as simple as the distance to a nearby object or the speed of a passing particle becomes deeply ambiguous in curved spacetime — the answer depends on who's measuring and how. This paper assembles a complete, coordinate-free toolkit: general formulas for angles (including relativistic aberration for any observer orientation), physical distances accounting for spacetime curvature, and a geodesic deviation equation valid even for extreme relative motion. It's a reference framework that anyone doing precision calculations near black holes, neutron stars, or in cosmology can apply directly.
Read the original paper →