Einstein was right: Objects moving near light speed appear twisted, scientists confirm

Now, add in another twist — the Terrell–Penrose effect, proposed in 1959. It suggests that fast-moving objects don’t just shrink. They also look rotated, as if reality itself is playing tricks.

Cube, sphere and a laser show

To prove this strange idea, researchers from TU Wien and the University of Vienna got creative. Since real objects can’t travel near light speed — it takes too much energy — they made light slower instead.

Students Dominik Hornoff and Victoria Helm recreated the effect using a clever trick. They simulated a world where light travels at just two metres per second. Then, they moved a cube and a sphere through a lab while firing laser flashes and capturing the reflections with a high-speed camera.

Each object was carefully reshaped. The cube, meant to mimic travel at 80% of light speed, was squashed into a cuboid. The sphere, simulating 99.9% of light speed, became a flat disc. Using a camera exposure of just a trillionth of a second, they took snapshots as though the objects were truly racing through space.

The result? Just as predicted. “The cube looked twisted, and the sphere’s north pole shifted,” Schattschneider said. “It matched the Terrell–Penrose effect perfectly.”

Why it matters

This mind-bending visual trick isn’t due to actual changes in the objects. Instead, it’s about how light reaches us. Light from the far side of a fast-moving object takes longer to arrive than light from the near side. That delay creates the illusion of rotation, not distortion.

Schattschneider explained, “If you took a photo of a fast-moving cube, the light from each corner arrives at different times. The cube’s changing position makes it look flipped.”

The study, published in Communications Physics on May 5, proves what was once just a mathematical idea. It shows how, when pushed to the limits, nature can behave in strange and alien ways.