IPL: Jorg Frauendiener: "Sightseeing in Einstein's World"

Published: Jan. 21, 2013, 11 a.m.

Professor Jorg Frauendiener's IPL describes how what we see is affected when the viewer travels at close to the speed of light. There are a number of visual distortions that occur, due to Einstein's special theory of relativity. These include Lorantz' contraction, aberrations that appear to bend straight lines, and the doppler effect which shift the colours seen down the spectrum towards the blue end.