Spacetime Fabric

An interactive 3D model of curved spacetime. It needs JavaScript and WebGL to run.

Four scales

Earth & Moon (about 384,000 km): the Moon rolls round the dent Earth makes in spacetime, both circle their shared barycenter, and Earth travels round the Sun.
The Solar System (about 12 billion km): the planets orbit at their real relative periods, and Jupiter makes the Sun wobble.
The Milky Way (about 100,000 light-years): our Sun orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre, where clocks slow almost to a stop. Two black holes can merge and send out gravitational waves.
The Universe (about 10 million light-years): galaxies pull on each other, and the Milky Way and Andromeda fall together.

Spacetime Fabric

An interactive model of how mass curves spacetime. Travel through four scales, from the Earth and Moon to clusters of galaxies, and watch gravity bend space and slow time.

Drag orbitScroll zoomClick rippleShift+Drag fling a probe1–4 change scaleM music

Not to scale. Sizes, distances and masses are exaggerated so the curvature shows. The grid stands in for 4D spacetime: Volume shows 3D space pulled inward; colour by Time flow to see clocks slow near mass.

An interactive model of curved spacetime

Spacetime Fabric

Fetching models000%

Earth · Sun · Milky Way · Local Group10⁸ → 10²³ m