......Let us consider the
observation of a coin from a viewpoint in the prolonging of its main axis
(picture 10). In this case, t is the time the light cast or reflected by
the coin takes to reach the observer's eye. If c is the speed of light,
the center of the coin O is b = ct from the observer. Being b an
astronomic value, for example 1 year-light; and finally being the diameter
of the coin also equal to b = 1 year-light. Follow our reasoning as you
observe picture 1.
Picture 1: explanation in the text
......The edge of the coin is
at distance b'> b from the observer. Consequently, the image of the
coin which reaches the observer suffers a "spatial and temporal
distortion", that is, at the same moment the observer receives some
pieces of information about the coin which are generated as different
times proportionally late to the distance of the point from the center. In
our example the delay is equal to 43 days (Pythagoras). If the coin
keeps its structure through time, and if the observer and the object are
still in relationship to each other, this effect shall not provoke
consequences that could be observed. Reversibly, if some structural
changes happen, that coin may never show itself to us as it actually is.
Then we may talk about the existence of an actual location which
translates the coin as it is at the moment and place where is is; and
about the existence of a virtual location, related to the way the coin
shows itself from the places its parts occupy or occupied in space, but in
a disposition which never existed and portrays the superposing of images
generated at different times.
......In order to make this
virtual location clear, let us imagine an extreme case: the instant and
local disappearing ¾as
if it were magic¾
of the whole coin. For a year the observer will not notice its
disappearing and, to all intents and purposes, its universe will not
present any local changes during such period, not event at the place where
the coin apparently is. After a year and 43 days, he will clearly feel
that the coin is being consumed from its center to its edge. Every day his
perception of location will be different and so different from the real
one that it will manifest itself through images which never existed at any
time (the coin changing into a ring).
......I would say that
virtual location is related to the set of proprieties an object manifests
to its observer, all of them subdued to changes exclusively generated by
the observer's location in time and space. The presented coin occupies a
real location but it manifests itself at every point of space through an
apparent or virtual location.
