Movie 11 (0:49)
Script : Returning
to the tram we now consider the colour shift. Even at low speeds,
ten percent of the speed of light, objects change their colour
significantly. Lamp posts ahead look green, but behind they look
red.
This is the Doppler
shift at work.
Just as the direction of motion of photons change when the camera
moves, so do the frequencies which we perceive as colour. Objects
we move towards appear blueshifted. Objects we move away from
appear redshifted. As we go faster, the effect becomes extreme,
and we see a rainbow effect as any sharp spectral features pass
through the visible band.
This is the cause
of red-shift, an observation astronomers made which showed nearly
all stars in the universe are moving away from us and each other.