Hyperbolic geometry
Hyperbolic geometry
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Hyperbolic geometry

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Hyperbolic geometry

In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry (also called Lobachevskian geometry or BolyaiLobachevskian geometry) is a non-Euclidean geometry. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is replaced with:

(Compare the above with Playfair's axiom, the modern version of Euclid's parallel postulate.)

The hyperbolic plane is a plane where every point is a saddle point. Hyperbolic plane geometry is also the geometry of pseudospherical surfaces, surfaces with a constant negative Gaussian curvature. Saddle surfaces have negative Gaussian curvature in at least some regions, where they locally resemble the hyperbolic plane.

The hyperboloid model of hyperbolic geometry provides a representation of events one temporal unit into the future in Minkowski space, the basis of special relativity. Each of these events corresponds to a rapidity in some direction.

When geometers first realised they were working with something other than the standard Euclidean geometry, they described their geometry under many different names; Felix Klein finally gave the subject the name hyperbolic geometry to include it in the now rarely used sequence elliptic geometry (spherical geometry), parabolic geometry (Euclidean geometry), and hyperbolic geometry. In the former Soviet Union, it is commonly called Lobachevskian geometry, named after one of its discoverers, the Russian geometer Nikolai Lobachevsky.

Hyperbolic geometry is more closely related to Euclidean geometry than it seems: the only axiomatic difference is the parallel postulate. When the parallel postulate is removed from Euclidean geometry the resulting geometry is absolute geometry. There are two kinds of absolute geometry, Euclidean and hyperbolic. All theorems of absolute geometry, including the first 28 propositions of book one of Euclid's Elements, are valid in Euclidean and hyperbolic geometry. Propositions 27 and 28 of Book One of Euclid's Elements prove the existence of parallel/non-intersecting lines.

This difference also has many consequences: concepts that are equivalent in Euclidean geometry are not equivalent in hyperbolic geometry; new concepts need to be introduced. Further, because of the angle of parallelism, hyperbolic geometry has an absolute scale, a relation between distance and angle measurements.

Single lines in hyperbolic geometry have exactly the same properties as single straight lines in Euclidean geometry. For example, two points uniquely define a line, and line segments can be infinitely extended.

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