Relativity visualized

Space Time Travel

Through the city at nearly the speed of light

Ute Kraus, Marc Borchers, January 26, 2005

Driving at nearly the speed of light? Impossible in real life, but feasible in a computer simulation: A tour through the city centre of Tübingen illustrates what we should see when moving at such a high speed.

Mr Tompkins in Tübingen
Riding along the Marktgasse
Colour and Brightness
Other places of interest
Simulating the relativistic bike ride
Riding the relativistic bike yourself
Acknowledgment, Summary, References

Tour of the city

Movie: Sprint, Quicktime (1.4 MB), AVI (1.7 MB)

Movie: Round trip, Quicktime (7.3 MB), AVI (4.2 MB)

All movies copyright Marc Borchers.

This is the online version of Ute Kraus, Marc Borchers: Fast lichtschnell durch die Stadt, Physik in unserer Zeit, Heft 2/2005, S. 64-69.

The article can be downloaded in PDF-format here:
Fast lichtschnell durch die Stadt (1.4 MB)
(in German)

continue...

More: Another example of a trip at nearly the speed of light is given in Beobachtungen bei Hochgeschwindigkeitsflügen (in German), in this case we pass the Brandenburg gate, Berlin. More details about aberration and the moving pinhole camera, including formulas, can be found in Reiseziel: Schwarzes Loch - Didaktisches Material (section 2, in German).

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