Lorentz Group - Appearance of The Night Sky

Appearance of The Night Sky

This isomorphism has a very interesting physical interpretation. We can identify the complex number

with a null vector in Minkowski space

or the Hermitian matrix

The set of real scalar multiples of this null vector, which we can call a null line through the origin, represents a line of sight from an observer at a particular place and time (an arbitrary event which we can identify with the origin of Minkowski spacetime) to various distant objects, such as stars.

But by stereographic projection, we can identify with a point on the Riemann sphere. Putting it all together, we have identified the points of the celestial sphere with certain Hermitian matrices, and also with lines of sight. This implies that the Möbius transformations of the Riemann sphere precisely represent the way that Lorentz transformations change the appearance of the celestial sphere.

For our purposes here, we can pretend that the "fixed stars" live in Minkowski spacetime. Then, the Earth is moving at a nonrelativistic velocity with respect to a typical astronomical object which might be visible at night. But, an observer who is moving at relativistic velocity with respect to the Earth would see the appearance of the night sky (as modeled by points on the celestial sphere) transformed by a Möbius transformation.