Red & Blue Shift on other ships in Super Cruise
- Thread starter cfww
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I'm not 100% accurate but I think that's already a thing. All ships moving away from me show a blue light, and I'm pretty sure then they are moving torwards me they are goldish yellowy orange.
I'm not certain about the latter but after you mentioned blue shift I was like OMG this might already be true
I'm not certain about the latter but after you mentioned blue shift I was like OMG this might already be true
I can't recall noticing that, but if it is like that than the red shift/blue shift is backwards.
How so? If an object is moving away from you, I would suspect that the wavelength of the light would decrease in your eyes thus the light would shift to the violet side of the spectrum till eventually you reach ultra violet. thus if an object is moving towards you the light emitted would have faster wave lengths when relative to you, thus red light?
If anyone's still in doubt about what's what, there's an easy little home experiment that clearly demonstrates why approach = blue shift (shorter wavelength) and receed means red shift (longer wavelength). You need a roll of paper (paper towels or a roll of toilet paper will do in a pinch, especially the rough cheap stuff that's next to impossible to tear) and one other person, plus a pen of some sort - ideally a felt pen.
Now place a couple meters of the paper out on a convenient table, and have your assistant hold one end, while weighing down the other end with a not-too-heavy book. Book must be light enough to move with the paper if it's pulled, without tearing it. Now start drawing up and down motions on the paper with the pen (do it very lightly in case you're using toilet paper or paper towels, they're fragile), while your assistant pulls the paper slowly towards him. Note the wavelength this creates. That represents the emitter and the reciever of the light being at a standstill compared to eachother, you being the emitter and your assistant being the reciever, and the movement of the paper represents the speed of propagation of the wave towards the reciever - in this case light, but it could just as well be sound.
Now repeat the experiment twice, once where your move towards your assistant as you're drawing with your up/down motions, once where you move away from your assistant, and once again note the wavelengths you generate. The movement should be slower than the rate at which your assistant pulls the paper (can't go breaking the lightspeed barrier here!). You'll note that while you, the emitter, are moving towards the reciever, the waves get compressed to a shorter wavelength, and while you are moving away they get expanded to a longer wavelength, even though you're emitting at a constant frequency (ie. drawing up/down at the same rate as before).
Easy and cheap to do, requiring no materials not available in the average household
[Edit] @efb, who posted while I was typing this up: Wavelength and Frequency are inversely proportional, so in fact both change: Wavelength = Speed / Frequency. Sound waves propagate at about 343m/s through air, so emit sound at concert pitch (440Hz) and the wavelength will be (343m/s) / 440s^-1 (the actual unit behind the Hz name. It simply means 'per second'), giving a wavelength of about 78cm. Up the frequency to 600Hz and we instead get a wavelength of about 57cm - Frequency goes up, wavelength goes down, speed remains constant as long as the medium the wave propagates through does not change.
And that's probably enough physics for one day [/Edit]
Now place a couple meters of the paper out on a convenient table, and have your assistant hold one end, while weighing down the other end with a not-too-heavy book. Book must be light enough to move with the paper if it's pulled, without tearing it. Now start drawing up and down motions on the paper with the pen (do it very lightly in case you're using toilet paper or paper towels, they're fragile), while your assistant pulls the paper slowly towards him. Note the wavelength this creates. That represents the emitter and the reciever of the light being at a standstill compared to eachother, you being the emitter and your assistant being the reciever, and the movement of the paper represents the speed of propagation of the wave towards the reciever - in this case light, but it could just as well be sound.
Now repeat the experiment twice, once where your move towards your assistant as you're drawing with your up/down motions, once where you move away from your assistant, and once again note the wavelengths you generate. The movement should be slower than the rate at which your assistant pulls the paper (can't go breaking the lightspeed barrier here!). You'll note that while you, the emitter, are moving towards the reciever, the waves get compressed to a shorter wavelength, and while you are moving away they get expanded to a longer wavelength, even though you're emitting at a constant frequency (ie. drawing up/down at the same rate as before).
Easy and cheap to do, requiring no materials not available in the average household
[Edit] @efb, who posted while I was typing this up: Wavelength and Frequency are inversely proportional, so in fact both change: Wavelength = Speed / Frequency. Sound waves propagate at about 343m/s through air, so emit sound at concert pitch (440Hz) and the wavelength will be (343m/s) / 440s^-1 (the actual unit behind the Hz name. It simply means 'per second'), giving a wavelength of about 78cm. Up the frequency to 600Hz and we instead get a wavelength of about 57cm - Frequency goes up, wavelength goes down, speed remains constant as long as the medium the wave propagates through does not change.
And that's probably enough physics for one day
[/Edit]
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Flippin' eck - a FIVE YEAR NECRO - is this a record?
Oh, oops, I wouldn't have replied if I'd realised that.
Either way, blueshifting the entire viewscreen would be a cool SFX for a jump sequence in a movie, just not very practical to fly with.
(Now, it'd be fun if travelling at superluminal speeds messed with colours to the point of shifting them out of the visible spectrum if your canopy was broken, implying that the "natural" colours are your ship artificially rendering them...)
(Now, it'd be fun if travelling at superluminal speeds messed with colours to the point of shifting them out of the visible spectrum if your canopy was broken, implying that the "natural" colours are your ship artificially rendering them...)
I like this idea, don't care if it's old.
However introducing red and blue shift into the Elite universe ultimately brings up more questions about how physics works in it.
If the wavelength shifting is present for other ships in supercruise, why isn't it present for literally everything else?
It brings up messy questions about the frame shift drive as well, such as what happens to the build up of high energy blueshifted matter accumulated at the front of the warp field when we drop out? All that spacedust gotta go somewhere.
Why can we see anything at all, and not just a blue mess up front and total darkness behind?
If we can see, why doesn't the blueshifted light kill us?
If the shields are strong enough to protect us from that gamma radiation, why are they so weak to visible-light lasers?
Why does nothing change when we run unshielded?
We're probably better off doing what most other sci-fi properties do and ignore the inconvenience of blue and redshift.
I'd just say let's be thankful that the universe is expanding away from us faster than light, and not contracting towards us faster than light.
However introducing red and blue shift into the Elite universe ultimately brings up more questions about how physics works in it.
If the wavelength shifting is present for other ships in supercruise, why isn't it present for literally everything else?
It brings up messy questions about the frame shift drive as well, such as what happens to the build up of high energy blueshifted matter accumulated at the front of the warp field when we drop out? All that spacedust gotta go somewhere.
Why can we see anything at all, and not just a blue mess up front and total darkness behind?
If we can see, why doesn't the blueshifted light kill us?
If the shields are strong enough to protect us from that gamma radiation, why are they so weak to visible-light lasers?
Why does nothing change when we run unshielded?
We're probably better off doing what most other sci-fi properties do and ignore the inconvenience of blue and redshift.
I'd just say let's be thankful that the universe is expanding away from us faster than light, and not contracting towards us faster than light.
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