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Mathematical physics

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Home » Mathematics and computation » Mathematical physics » Curious consequence of special relativity observed for the first time in the lab

Curious consequence of special relativity observed for the first time in the lab

06 Mar 2025
Image showing a sphere made up of slices. The sphere's north pole that pointed towards the camera is located at the leftmost rim. The meridians connecting both poles are visible as brighter dots. Closer inspection shows that the horizontal north-south axis is 11% longer than the vertical (equatorial) diameter. This effect is an artifact caused by the necessary tilt of the Lorentz-contracted sphere relative to the light source to ensure proper illumina- tion. The meridians appear discontinuous because they are almost in line of sight seen from the camera.
A snapshot of relativistic motion: Experimental data on the Terrell rotation of a deliberately Lorentz contracted sphere at 0.999 c, moving from right to left. (Courtesy: Dominik Hornof et al., "A Snapshot of Relativistic Motion: Visualizing the Terrell Effect" 10.48550/arXiv.2409.04296, CC-BY 4.0)
A counterintuitive result from Einstein’s special theory of relativity has finally been verified m

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Tim Wogan is a science writer based in the US
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