| The video shows photorealistic representations of reduced c scenes. This means that the speed of light has been slowed down from over one billion kilometres per hour to a speed of only one meter per second. The consequences of this fiction have been restricted to optical effects, and allows us to see special-relativistic effects not possible in everyday life. The first scene is a trip down a highway without any relativistic effects. Note the position and orientation of the structures in the desert. For the next trip, we enable relativistic aberration. As we accelerate, note that the angular compression creates an initial impression of backwards motion. As we pass the sign, it seems to rotate around. This can be viewed as a Terrell rotation, or as angular aberration keeping the sign in our field of view as we pass it. The back walls of the building are also visible, and extreme distortion is visible on all the objects. Note particularly the sky, steadily shrinking down to the vanishing point. We now enable Doppler shifting. Note that the red desert is blue-shifted ahead through the green and red, causing a rainbow effect. As the blue of the sky is further blue-shifted, it drains of colour. Near the edges of the image, the opposite happens - the sky takes on a reddish hue and the road is drained of colour as the red desert shifts into the infra-red. With full relativistic effects (now including the headlight effect) the image quickly turns monotone, with objects near the ... |
