Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Space
Space
Science
Keith Cooper

A spaceship moving near the speed of light would appear rotated, special relativity experiment proves

An illustration of a spaceship flying extremely fast in a colorful display.

In a bizarre repercussion of Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, objects traveling close to the speed of light appear flipped over.

The Special Theory of Relativity, or special relativity for short, describes what happens to objects traveling at close to the speed of light. In particular, it discusses two major repercussions of moving so quickly. One is that time would clearly appear to pass more slowly for the object traveling close to the speed of light relative to slower moving bodies around it. This is rooted in a phenomenon called "time dilation," which also leads to the famous Twin Paradox, has been proven experimentally and is even considered when building certain kinds of technology. Global positioning survey (GPS) satellites in orbit, for instance, have to account for time dilation when providing accurate navigation data.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.