Visualization Showcase: General-Relativistic Black Hole Visualization

Abstract

Black holes are among the most fascinating and weird objects in the universe. They distort space and time in their close neighborhood in a way that is far beyond our every day experience. We demonstrate the visual effects of this curved spacetime by means of four-dimensional nonlinear ray tracing applied to an accretion disk around a spinning black hole and a sphere oscillating between two static, charged black holes. We discuss how visualization helps predict and communicate the interesting effects of general relativity, in particular, its geometric effects on light propagation. The nonlinear behavior of light propagation leads to a compute-intensive rendering process; we report on our experiences with highly parallel rendering in this context.