How Does Relativity Affect Our Perception of Light and Photons?

[jlorda]

That's a question better answered by someone more in the know than I.

Essentially, all the light in front of you will be blue-shifted way up the scale to nearly infinite energy, whereas all the light behind you will be red-shifted way down the scale. Think of what an ambulance in front of you and another behind you would sound like if you were traveling at mach .99.

There are other details, such as the fact that your destination would get up all in your face as you virtually immediately arrive there.

So we would not see anything because our eyes can only see in the visible spectrum of light?

 

[DaveC426913]

So we would not see anything because our eyes can only see in the visible spectrum of light?

Well... Don't forget that the universe is shot-through with very low frequency radiation as much as anything else; that would be correspondingly blue-shifted up into the visible spectrum.

That is, if you magically lived through the raging storm of hard ultra-high energy cosmic radiation pelting your ship.

 

[lightarrow]

So we would not see anything because our eyes can only see in the visible spectrum of light?

High energy gamma rays would however excite your retina together with all the other components of your eyes and your vision area in your brain, so I imagine that you would perceive an almost infinitely bright light as if it were coming from all over, at least for an infinitesimal time before your death...