Terrell Revisited: The Invisibility of the Lorentz Contraction

[Ken G]

And high redshift objects, such as distant supernova with z>7, and CMBR with z>1000.
The high redshift objects are traveling more than .866c but straight away from us.

I wouldn't count that, only macro objects passing each other at the same place and time with a relative speed. Cosmological redshifts are generally not regarded as high-speed motion, but rather a dynamical change in the metric that determines distances.

 

[PAllen]

There's "superluminal jets":
The superluminal jets probably consist of particles--not individual macroscopic objects. And high redshift objects, such as distant supernova with z>7, and CMBR with z>1000.
The high redshift objects are traveling more than .866c but straight away from us.

I explicitly said "near earth", which is what would be needed to try to photograph the effects you've been simulating.

 

[PAllen]

I wouldn't count that, only macro objects passing each other at the same place and time with a relative speed. Cosmological redshifts are generally not regarded as high-speed motion, but rather a dynamical change in the metric that determines distances.

And that is a matter of contention, which I would rather not hijack this thread to discuss. A consensus position is that relative velocity of distant objects simply has no well defined meaning.

 

[JDoolin]

I explicitly said "near earth", which is what would be needed to try to photograph the effects you've been simulating.

About 53 million light years away, M87 has a superluminal jet that is large enough to distinguish some macroscopic detail.

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys200/lectures/superlum/superlum.htm

Now that doesn't occupy a large solid-angle, but it should still show the stretching and compression along the axis of it's velocity.

The jet is simultaneously being shot out from both sides of the active galaxy, which would provide a dramatic difference between the jets moving away, and the jets moving toward us.

We might not see the superluminal jet "go by" like this abstract object does here:
http://www.spoonfedrelativity.com/web_images/ViewFollowing19.gif

But we would still observe whatever details are present in the approaching cloud, stretched out by the superluminal effect, and on the other side, flattened by the combination of the recession effect and the Lorentz Contraction effect.

So, for instance, why here, does the jet seem to only come out of one side of the galaxy? Is it an asymmetrical event, or is it actually coming out of both sides, equally, but our perception of the receding jet are so slowed that we can't see it yet?

 

[PAllen]

Well, the other jet would be red shifted and dimmed versus blue shifted and brightened. Don't know that fully accounts for no visibility, but it would certainly contribute. There is a large component velocity towards us for superluminal apparent motion.