Figure 30: “Small wave fronts” of the
light cone in the spacetime (156)
of a plane gravitational wave. The
picture shows the intersection of the light cone of
Figure 29 with the lightlike hyperplane for three different values of
the constant: (a) exactly at the caustic (parabola), (b) at
a larger value of (hyperbolic paraboloid), and
(c) at a smaller value of (elliptic paraboloid). In each case, the hyperplane does not intersect the one
generator tangent to
; all other generators are intersected transversely
and exactly once.
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