Horn, D., Helm, V., of God Rodriguez, E. and al. / Physy Commune
An instantaneous relativist movement: visualization of the terrell-penrosis effect
A team of scientists managed to make the speed of light visible. The method consists of combining multiple and very thin “slices” of light reflected in an object, and the images, which mix art with technology, obtained are intriguing.
Earlier this year, a team of Austrian scientists managed to show, for the first time, the so -called Terrell-penrosisan effect of restricted relativity theorized a century ago.
Also known as terrell rotation, the effect describes the idea that when an object travels to the speed of light, any attempt to photograph it will make it seem that the object suffered a rotation.
To recreate this laboratory phenomenon, researchers at Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (Tu Wien) and the University of Vienna combined Laser and High Speed Photographyand managed to make the speed of light something that We can directly observe.
The results of the were presented in an article recently published in the scientific journal Communications Physics.
In the article, the team, led by Dominik Hornof e Peter Schattschneiderexplains how the physical Anton lamp For the first time this photographic phenomenon in 1924.
Lampa, who studied and taught at the University of Vienna, described what he believed happen to the appearance of a bar As it approached the Speed Cosmic Limit.
Thirty -five years later, the physicists Roger Penrose e Nelson James Terrell They reached, regardless, to an additional conclusion: a photograph would not show the compressed object, how it would be intuitive to expect, but rather driven.
That is, instead of seeing only one face of a cube, We would see two faces And the singing that unites them, as if the object had suffered a rotation in spaceexplains a.
“If we wanted to photograph a rocket as they passed the great speed, we would have to be aware that the light from the different points of the object would take different times to reach the House,” explains Schattschneider in a Tu Wien. “That makes the cube look like”.
The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. Even the most powerful particle accelerators, such as CERN or Fermilab, only get approach this valueand for various reasons, it is not possible to photograph these particles correctly or observe their shape.
The Tu Wien investigators team Then he was inspired by a principle similar to panoramic mode of an iPhone: And if an object was divided into Tiny segments to photograph eachthen joining the images in a final compound?
To “slice” the object, They resorted to something we usually tried to avoid: the blinding reflex of intense light. In our homes or cars, we deviate from these sparkles, but in this case, They are exactly what you are looking for when you want to microphotograph your own light.
“We lit the object with a pulsed laser and took a photograph after a certain time interval. The reflected light from the parts of the object corresponding to their respective optical path Appears brilliant in this photograph”, Explains the team.
With this technique, the researchers managed to effectively reduce the speed of light to about 2 meters per seconda prowess comparable to join almost 150 million photographs of a tourist trip.
“We combined the static images in small videos of ultra -rarefilled objects. The result was exactly what we expected, ”said Schattschneider.“ A cube looks twisted, a sphere remains a sphere, but the north pole appears in another place. ”
The team concludes that the same type of experimental configuration, or an evolved version of their concept, can be used to study other aspects of restricted relativity.
However, the advice is: When traveling at the speed of lightmake sure it shows the Chamber Your best sides.
