C-ship Mission: Flying through the Lattice


Here's a movie which illustrates all of the effects of special relativity at once. Spacetime looks weird from oblique angles, so don't worry if what you see looks puzzling the first time through. I spent the better part of a week doing the math to convince myself this was what one would actually see.

This movie was made by the artificial intelligence commanding the C-ship Michelson. The Michelson's mission is to fly through the Lattice Galaxy, starting at rest with respect to one face and accelerating at a constant 100 metres per second per second until reaching the other side of the Lattice, 64000 light-years from the point of departure.

To fully appreciate this movie, you need an MPEG player that allows you to advance, frame by frame, through the movie. To download the movie and view it with your MPEG player, click on the following image, which is a still frame from the movie. If you don't have an MPEG player, or your player doesn't allow frame-by-frame display, you can browse still frames from the movie by clicking on the frame numbers in the table below.


Play the movie

To view still frames from the fly-through movie, complete with all the parameters for each frame, click on the frame numbers below.


                                                  Doppler
        Ship   Lattice               Light  Aberr  Shift  Lorentz  Time    Lattice
Frame   Days  Days/Yrs      v/c      Years    45°   45°     Cont.  Dial.  Thick. LY
-----   ----   ------   ----------   ------ ----- ------- -------  -----  ---------
 1         0         0d  0.00000000   0.000  45.0   1.00   1.00000  1       64000
 2        10        11d  0.28047668   0.004  34.5   1.25   0.95986  1.04    61431
 3        20        25d  0.52004305   0.019  26.2   1.60   0.85414  1.17    54665
 4        30        47d  0.69861917   0.053  19.8   2.09   0.71549  1.40    45792
 5        40        86d  0.81867872   0.123  14.9   2.75   0.57425  1.74    36752
 6        50       154d  0.89389823   0.261  11.2   3.64   0.44827  2.23    28689
 7        60       275d  0.93896088   0.527  8.41   4.84   0.34402  2.91    22018
 8        70      1.34y  0.96523621   1.027  6.31   6.44   0.26138  3.83    16728
 9        80      2.39y  0.98031570   1.956  4.73   8.58   0.19744  5.06    12636
10        90      4.25y  0.98889113   3.661  3.55  11.43   0.14864  6.73     9513
11       100      7.57y  0.99374250   6.764  2.66  15.24   0.11170  8.95     7149
12       110     13.48y  0.99647897   12.38  1.99  20.33   0.08384  11.9     5366
13       120     23.98y  0.99801994   22.50  1.49  27.12   0.06290  15.9     4025
14       130     42.68y  0.99888689   40.68  1.12  36.17   0.04717  21.2     3019
15       140     75.95y  0.99937437   73.26  0.840 48.25   0.03537  28.3     2264
16       150    135.16y  0.99964840   131.5  0.629 64.37   0.02652  37.7     1697
17       160    240.54y  0.99980241   235.6  0.472 85.87   0.01988  50.3     1272
18       170    428.06y  0.99988897   421.4  0.354 114.55  0.01490  67.1      954
19       180    761.79y  0.99993761   752.8  0.265 152.82  0.01117  89.5      715
20       190   1355.70y  0.99996494  1343.5  0.199 203.86  0.00837  119       536
21       200   2412.63y  0.99998030  2395.9  0.149 271.96  0.00628  159       402
22       210   4293.55y  0.99998893  4270.6  0.112 362.80  0.00471  213       301
23       220   7640.89y  0.99999378  7608.9  0.084 483.98  0.00353  284       226
24       230  13597.86y  0.99999650  13552   0.063 645.64  0.00264  378       169
25       240  24198.99y  0.99999804  24135   0.047 861.30  0.00198  505       127
26       250  43064.96y  0.99999890  42972   0.035 1148.99 0.00149  673        95
27       260  76639.19y  0.99999938  76503   0.026 1532.78 0.00111  898        71
28       270 136388.48y  0.99999965 136184   0.020 2044.76 0.00083  1198       53
29       280 242719.40y  0.99999980 242406   0.015 2727.76 0.00063  1598       40
30       290 431947.82y  0.99999989 431458   0.011 3638.89 0.00047  2132       30

Onward to Mission: Trans-Lattice Shuttle

Backward to The Aberration of Light

Up to C-ship


by John Walker