A colorful relativity problem
DOI: 10.1063/1.4797396
Borchers comments: The image on the Physics Today cover depicts the geometric distortion only, so it is not what one would actually see when falling at 90% the speed of light. In addition to the shift in colors due to the Doppler effect, the appearance would be dominated by the searchlight effect. When looking in the direction of motion at 90%, the wavelengths would be shorter by a factor of 4.35, while the intensity would increase by a factor of more than 1500 (Doppler factor to the fifth power); the exact value depends on the spectral distribution in the infrared. To accurately render the color distortion, we would need the spectral distribution of the scene in the infrared. Unfortunately, we don’t know this distribution for the market square.
More about the Authors
Marc Borchers. (borchers@ipacs.de) Color-Physics GmbH, Tübingen, Germany .
