A movie that can easily experience 'How can the world look when approaching the speed of light?

Theoretical physicist Alberto Einstein 's special relativity theory explains the movement close to the speed of light which can not be explained by Newtonian mechanics, but it is very difficult to imagine a state near the speed of light actually in the brain is. A project named " Captain Einstein " was held by a research team at Ghent University in Belgium, which makes it possible for movies to experience the way the world looks at such a light speed in an easy-to-understand manner.

Captain Einstein - Original boat tours since 1905
http://captaineinstein.org/

In the Captain Einstein project, we assumed that the speed of light is 20 km / h in order to give priority to comprehensibility, and created a movie that approached the speed of light (20 km / h) at the boat. The created 360 degree movie can be seen below.

Captain Einstein


The movie begins with a situation where you go on a boat and go through a calm river, and the voice of a woman is saying "Welcome, I am Maya Einstein." A woman named this Einstein will speak as a guide to a magical movie.

In a 360 ° movie, you can move the viewpoint by clicking the arrow in the upper left of the screen or by dragging the playback screen itself. Try to the right ......

It is possible to look backward.

You can also face up.

"The speed of light in the real world is a tremendous speed of 300,000 km per second (about 1.08 billion km / h), which I can not quite get to experience, but in this virtual world the speed of light is set at 20 km per hour" The captain guided me and gave me an introduction to a mysterious experience. The boat accelerates with a shout that "Preparation is good? 3 ..... 2 ... 1.

When the speed at which the boat goes is 8 km / h (speed of 40% of the speed of light in the movie), the appearance of the world has changed. The scenery in the front seems to be bluish and it seems that the line of the building is slightly bent.

When looking to the right, I could confirm that the building was bent as if to pull forward.

Looking upwards, you can see that the color of the sky is yellowish as it goes backwards compared to Aoi's in the front.

When looking backward to the voice of the captain that "everything is dyed yellow," behind us, the sight has definitely begun to turn yellow.

Why is the building distorted and its color changing like this, can you explain it based on the premise of special relativity theory that "light speed is immutable for all observers"? First, because the light moves at a finite speed (20 km / h in the movie, the speed is 20 km / h), the image of the building reaches the viewer's eyes at the same speed of 20 km at the same speed on the roof and the base part. However, when the moving speed of the observer approaches the speed of light, the speed at which the landscape image reaches the moving speed of the observer starts to slow down. Therefore, even though the foundation of a building closer to the observer seems to be normal, the roof of the building far from the observer arrives late to the eyes of the observer, so even in the same building the speed at which the image reaches at the lower part and the upper part There is a difference in the result, and as a result it looks bent in a shape like a fish.

While the observer's front looks bluish, it looks yellowish as it goes backwards because of the Doppler effect of light . According to the property that the light from the approaching light source looks bluish ( blue shift ), the light from the remote light source looks reddish ( red shift ), the light in front approaching at the speed close to light speed appears bluish, The light behind going away at a speed is red like it looks yellow (at present, it looks yellowish).

"Up to now it was speed of 40% of the speed of light, let's accelerate to the speed of two thirds of the speed of light here (13 km / h)," he said. The boat accelerates with the sound of goon ......

It reached 13 km / h. There is a part that is bluish, purple like about how bad the front is bad.

I think that the distortion of the building is a joke.

Looking backwards, it was dyed red as a result of the red shift.

Looking up at the top, you can clearly see the gradation from red to blue.

"Let's speed up and let us accelerate to 17 km / h (85% of the speed of light)", when the captain tells us ....

I saw a scene like a mysterious rainbow where purple, light blue, blue overlapped many times in the front.

Looking at the side, in the state near the speed of light, the building contracts in the direction of motion due to a phenomenon called Lorentz contraction , so the width is narrowed and the state where the height of the building is decreasing as it goes forward It is observable.

And, looking back a little more, the black space was spreading.

The speed of the boat is very close to the speed of light, the light of the scene passed by can no longer keep up with the boat.

When looking at the overhead, it turns out that the width of yellow and red becomes very narrow, and it changes to black in the vicinity of overhead.

Just passing the bridge overhead, I distorted the scenery feeling bad.

Continuing further acceleration and reaching 19 km / h (99% of light speed) ......

The scenery looks distorted, and you can see the gradation of the light on the ring ahead.

When turning a little sideways, the black part was increasing to the front of the boat diagonally.

Boat that keeps approaching the speed of light further. Even when I gradually look at the front, the black part starts to appear at the edge of sight ......

Most of light other than the direction of travel will not reach.

The light can not keep catching up with the boat as it is ... ...

The world has been completely enveloped in darkness. The scenery seen by objects of light speed is synonymous with not seeing anything.

Captain Einstein's 360 degree movie can also be downloaded on the Google Play store. By using a device that can experience VR with a smartphone such as Gear VR , you can experience a world approaching the speed of light.

Captain Einstein - Apps on Google Play