Distortion with speed

Hello... How fast would one have to be travelling (theoretically) before
any distortion could be seen to take place in the objects outside the
ship, as viewed by the occupants? ....Jon

wrote:
Hello... How fast would one have to be travelling (theoretically) before
any distortion could be seen to take place in the objects outside the
ship, as viewed by the occupants?

If you're refering to relativisitc effects, then that would depend
on how much you think it takes to become noticable. You can calculate
time & length transformations yourself, with this formula:

gamma = 1/SQRT[1 - (v/c)^2]

SQRT means "square root of"

v = relative velocity

c = speed of light

So let's do an example. Let's say the spaceship is doing 90% of
lightspeed. c = 186,282 miles/second, so 90% of that is 186,282 x 0.9 =
167653.8 miles/second. 0.9^2 = 0.81. 1 - 0.81 = 0.19. SQRT[0.19] ~
0.44. 1/0.44 ~ 2.29. So, everything with a relative speed of 90% of
lightspeed will be slower and shorter by a factor of about 2.29.

-Mark Martin

wrote:

wrote:
Hello... How fast would one have to be travelling (theoretically) before
any distortion could be seen to take place in the objects outside the
ship, as viewed by the occupants?

If you're refering to relativisitc effects, then that would depend
on how much you think it takes to become noticable. You can calculate
time & length transformations yourself, with this formula:

gamma = 1/SQRT[1 - (v/c)^2]

SQRT means "square root of"

v = relative velocity

c = speed of light

So let's do an example. Let's say the spaceship is doing 90% of
lightspeed. c = 186,282 miles/second, so 90% of that is 186,282 x 0.9 =
167653.8 miles/second. 0.9^2 = 0.81. 1 - 0.81 = 0.19. SQRT[0.19] ~
0.44. 1/0.44 ~ 2.29. So, everything with a relative speed of 90% of
lightspeed will be slower and shorter by a factor of about 2.29.

Which would be pretty obvious!

A better approach for the OP's purpose would be to rearrange the
equation so as to give v as a function of gamma. A little algebra yields

v = c * sqrt(1 - (1 / gamma^2)).

So for a more realistic example, if our limit of distortion-detection
is 1%, then gamma = 1.01; plugging that into the above yields

v_1% ~= 0.14c ~= 42,000 km/s.

--
Odysseus