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A human creates an image basing on the information delivered by photons that arrived at his retina simultaneously. Due to finite and constant velocity of light these photons left the moving body at different times, since not all points of…
The strange visual appearance of objects is one of the puzzling predictions of Einstein's relativity. This is mainly due to the distinction between measuring and seeing, where the former is described by the Lorentz Transformation and the…
The conventional discussion of the observed distortions of space and time in Special Relativity (the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction and Time Dilatation) is extended by considering observations, from a stationary frame, of : (i) objects…
Nature succeeds in accelerating extended and massive objects to relativistic velocities. Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and in galactic superluminal sources and gamma-ray bursts fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a few to several…
We investigate the effects of the aberration of light for a uniformly accelerating observer. The observer we consider is initially at rest with respect to a luminous spherical object--a star, say--and then starts to move away with constant…
The conventional discussion of apparent distortions of space and time in Special Relativity (the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction and Time Dilatation) is extended by considering observations of : (i) moving objects of limited lifetime in…
The special theory of relativity has fundamentally changed our views of space and time. The relativity of simultaneity in particular, and the theory of relativity as a whole, still presents significant difficulty for beginners in the…
It has been more than a century since first Lorentz and later Einstein explored relativistic events and still important consequences of that remains unclear to everybody. The present study extensively focus on Lorentz (Length) contraction…
A challenge in teaching about special relativity is that a number of the theory's effects are at odds with the intuition of classical physics, as well as student's everyday experience. The relativity of simultaneity, time dilation and…
The theory of special relativity can be generalized by means of a new principle called Conservation of Information. This allows a derivation of the constancy of the velocity of light with respect to moving frames, and, consequently, of…
We present an experimental visualization of the Terrell effect, an optical phenomenon predicted in 1959 by Roger Penrose and James Terrell, which reveals that the Lorentz contraction of a moving object is not visible in a snapshot…
Relativistic aberration influences apparent luminosities of objects moving with relativistic relative velocities. The superluminosity or dimming of incoming or receding jets ejected from Active Galactic Nuclei is believed to be the…
A formula for the apparent rotation of a relativistically moving object has been known for some time, but it seems not to have been realized that this formula has a very pretty interpretation in terms of formal group laws. Version 2…
Visualizations that adopt a first-person point of view allow observation and, in the case of interactive simulations, experimentation with relativistic scenes. This paper gives examples of three types of first-person visualizations:…
The theory of measurement is employed to elucidate the physical basis of general relativity. For measurements involving phenomena with intrinsic length or time scales, such scales must in general be negligible compared to the (translational…
The influence of the relativistic motion of the reference frame on the light reflection law is investigated. The method is based on applying the relativistic aberration affect for three light signals: incident, normal and reflected rays.…
The shortening of bodies in the direction of motion, Lorentz contraction, follows from the solution of Maxwell's equations. Moving light clocks will tick slower than those at rest because the speed of light does not depend on a source of…
Aims: we propose that the condition of relative motion between us and the objects that we observe in the Universe should generate relativistic aberration on the photons that such objects emit, varying the observed flux similarly to the…
The notion of a Fast Moving Object (FMO), i.e. an object that moves over a distance exceeding its size within the exposure time, is introduced. FMOs may, and typically do, rotate with high angular speed. FMOs are very common in sports…
For over a century Minkowskian spacetime has dominated discussions of space contraction and time dilation within special relativity. Brown and Pooley have called into question both the assumptions of Minkowski and the effects his presumed…