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Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates


In general relativity, Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates are a pair of coordinate systems for a Schwarzschild geometry (i.e. a spherically symmetric black hole) which are adapted to radial null geodesics. Null geodesics are the worldlines of photons; radial ones are those that are moving directly towards or away from the central mass. They are named for Arthur Stanley Eddington and David Finkelstein, even though neither ever wrote down these coordinates or the metric in these coordinates. Roger Penrose seems to have been the first to write down the null form but credits it (wrongly) to the above paper by Finkelstein, and, in his Adams Prize essay later that year, to Eddington and Finkelstein. Most influentially, Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, in their book Gravitation, refer to the null coordinates by that name.

In these coordinate systems, outward (inward) traveling radial light rays (which each follow a null geodesic) define the surfaces of constant "time", while the radial coordinate is the usual area coordinate so that the surfaces of rotation symmetry have an area of 4πr2. One advantage of this coordinate system is that it shows that the apparent singularity at the Schwarzschild radius is only a coordinate singularity and is not a true physical singularity. While this fact was recognized by Finkelstein, it was not recognized (or at least not commented on) by Eddington, whose primary purpose was to compare and contrast the spherically symmetric solutions in Whitehead's theory of gravitation and Einstein's.

The Schwarzschild coordinates are , and the Schwarzschild metric is well known:


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