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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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So, I would assume that you would be communicating through radio waves. If an object broadcasting a signal moving at the speed light away from you, I would further assume you experience a severe Doppler effect. To the point that I don't think you would experience anything coherent. You would receive small packets of information at a time, scattered across several million years.
This is just my initial impression on the fly, do not take this as any sort of gospel. I also did some communcations work for a time. So, this is tickling my brain and I might spend the rest of my evening in my books.
If we assume that the person moving at light speed is going in circles about the stationary person instead of linearly away. Would the radio waves be doppler shifted if transmitted orthogonally?
Ooh, interesting point.
I suspect all EM would be shifted according to the angle relative to the target - so at exactly 90° It would be "half shifted" - or zero. (Assumption based on blue/red shift of light).
I'm assuming the traveler is at a percentage of C, not at C (I think being at C is a completely different scenario, like would any EM escape the traveler?).
But I'm only an armchair quantum physicist (I've read a few books over the years). Look forward to what someone who understands Quantum Weirdness has to say.
One would have to be orbiting the other. I don't think you'd get any doppler shift in that signal, because the distance between transmitter and receiver remain constant.
The fun part of that scenario is that emitted photons carry momentum from your motion. If you're moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, hopefully you're using an omnidirectional transmitter.
Edit: hmm. I wonder if Terrell rotation comes into play here. Probably not in terms of the actual transmission, but it certainly would in terms of placement of a transmitter on a spacecraft.
In principle you could have equipment that cancels out any doppler effect, no?
That's awesome, let me know if you find anything interesting
To cancel the effect of someone moving away from you, the equipment would simply hold the transmission until you received the whole thing.
Like waiting for someone to finish leaving a message on an amswerimg machine before hitting play.
I see
I remember in the game series Mass Effect they spoke of being able to break the EM communication barrier problems. They used a quantum entangled pair. Wiggle one, and the other instantaneously adopts the same position anywhere in the universe.
FTL travel needs FTL coms and radio ain't that. Star Trek handwavium called it subspace. Both of science fiction, but hey, isn't that what all this is about.