{"id":213269,"date":"2025-05-05T09:04:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T14:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/a-snapshot-of-relativistic-motion-special-relativity-made-visible"},"modified":"2025-05-05T09:04:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T14:04:53","slug":"a-snapshot-of-relativistic-motion-special-relativity-made-visible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/a-snapshot-of-relativistic-motion-special-relativity-made-visible","title":{"rendered":"A snapshot of relativistic motion: Special relativity made visible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-snapshot-of-relativistic-motion-special-relativity-made-visible2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When an object moves extremely fast\u2014close to the speed of light\u2014certain basic assumptions that we take for granted no longer apply. This is the central consequence of Albert Einstein\u2019s special theory of relativity. The object then has a different length than when it is at rest, and time passes differently for the object than it does in the laboratory. All this has been repeatedly confirmed in experiments.<\/p>\n<p>However, one interesting consequence of relativity has not yet been observed\u2014the so-called Terrell-Penrose effect. In 1959, physicists James Terrell and Roger Penrose (Nobel laureate in 2020) independently concluded that fast-moving objects should appear rotated. However, this effect has never been demonstrated.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a collaboration between TU Wien (Vienna) and the University of Vienna has succeeded for the first time in reproducing the effect using laser pulses and precision cameras\u2014at an effective <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/speed+of+light\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">speed of light<\/a> of 2 meters per second. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s42005-025-02003-6\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Communications Physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When an object moves extremely fast\u2014close to the speed of light\u2014certain basic assumptions that we take for granted no longer apply. This is the central consequence of Albert Einstein\u2019s special theory of relativity. The object then has a different length than when it is at rest, and time passes differently for the object than it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}