| Gallery |
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Click on any of the images for a
larger version.
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| Static |
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A tram at rest. |
| Warped |
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A tram in motion appears to be Terrel
rotated, or equivalently, shortened and sheared. |
| Darkened |
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With all relativistic effects visible,
the light from the tram is Doppler-shifted to higher frequencies (blueshifted)
and darkened due to time dilation and geometrical effects. |
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| Newton |
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A desert highway scene. |
| +Aberration |
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The scene corrected for aberration at
0.76c. |
| +Doppler |
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The scene corrected for aberration and
Doppler shift. |
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| +Intensity |
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The scene with all relativistic
effects, including head-lighting / intensity effects. |
| Terrel Rotation |
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A Terrel-rotated cube. |
| Static |
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Flying inside a cube at 0.99c. |
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| Earth |
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Objects that present a circular
outline, like the Earth, present a circular outline regardless of
velocity - but can still appear distorted. |
| Starfield |
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The starfield appears bunched and is
Doppler shifted. |
| Speed Limit |
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A close-up of the speed sign. |
Click on any of the images for a
larger version.
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| Downloads |
|
Click on the images below to download
the two extended relativistic optics videos, Visualizing
Special Relativity, and Seeing
Relativity, in RealPlayer
format. A complete printer-friendly commentary
is available for the videos.
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| Visualizing Special
Relativity |
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[7 minutes] Compare the real and slow-light
worlds with simple scenes
VSR.rm 9 Mb |
|
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| Seeing Relativity |
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[10 minutes] Features advanced relativistic
effects and in-depth explanations
BACKLIGHT.rm 13 Mb |
|
High resolution DVDs (PAL format only) of Visualizing
Special Relativity and Seeing Relativity and other relativistic movies may be purchased
by visiting the Through Einstein's Eyes site.
Higher quality MPEG versions of
sections of Seeing Relativity are available below (200 kb - 1.2
Mb).
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| Flash |
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Instead of instantaneously
illuminating the scene, a flash photograph produces an expanding
sphere of photons. |
| Flicker |
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Similarly, a flickering streetlamp
produces a rippling effect. |
| On/Off |
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If we turn the lamp on and off, we can
see the lag produced by the slow light. |
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| Mercator |
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Using a "wraparond" Mercator
projection we can see how parts of the scene expand or contract as
we accelerate. |
| Bright |
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Riding a tram at near-light
speeds the head-light effect brightens the scene ahead and
darkens the scene. |
| Doppler |
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As we move along the street, the green
streetlamps ahead of the tram are blueshifted; behind, they are
redshifted. |
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| Fast |
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IIf we instead watch the tram go by,
we see it warp according to the Terrel and other effects |
| Through |
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If we plunge through the tram, all of
its parts Terrel rotate independently making it appear to turn
inside out! |
| Commentary |
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For more information on a particular
scene, see the commentary for an explanation of the effects at
work. |
A paper on
the physics of relativistic optics and the implementation of our visualization
engine is available in Portable
Document Format (.pdf).
|
