20120919

Video of Light Motion

Just wanted to let everyone know about this amazing video:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/now-you-can-actually-see-light-moving-in-slow-mo

2 comments:

Rick Doogie said...

As soon as I saw the ripples (near end of video) moving away from the bottle instead of toward the camera, I thought it might be an effect similar to a strobe light on a fan, where the fan appears to move backwards because of the method of observing, NOT because it actually is moving backwards. What do you think, Dr. Glenn? Or is this video "proof" that time distorts as we near the speed of light?

Glenn Borchardt said...

Remember that the light that we see is simply reflected or diffracted from the object. We would not see the light beam at all if it were travelling through perfectly empty space without the object. All motions of microcosms are affected by the motions of other microcosms. Because time is motion, I suppose one could say that "time was distorted," but that would be the case at any velocity, not just velocities near the speed of light.