Do Planets, Flattened in Special Relativity, Wobble?

Laws of physics should be the same for an observer moving at a constant velocity or not moving at all (an observer cannot tell the difference between him moving and the world moving around him). That is the cornerstone of Special Relativity. Besides that, Special Relativity claims that lengths / distances shorten in the direction of motion: only in that direction, but not in an orthogonal/perpendicular direction. For an observer moving at a very high speed, all planets would look flattened:

Let’s discuss thought experiment on the right side of the drawing:

1. An observer in a spaceship at a high constant velocity passes by the Earth. For simplicity, let’s ignore that the Earth orbits the Sun and focus on the Earth own spinning around its axis (marked by the blue line). Whether the Earth spins or not, in the eyes of the observer it does not wobble: if not to pay attention to the continents and oceans on its surface, in the eyes of the observer there is no difference between the Earth spinning or not — it does not wobble in space. If it was completely covered with the ocean, the observer would have a hard time identifying if it spins or not. Point (1): the Earth does not wobble, it is only flattened in the eyes of the observer (by Special Relativity distances shorten in the direction of a motion).
2. Let’s assume that the velocity of the observer (the red arrow) is neither parallel nor perpendicular to the Earth axis (the blue line). Let’s call the red arrow direction “horizontal” (as it is drawn). The North and South poles of the Earth do not spin. The Earth axis appears to the observer “more vertical”/”more perpendicular to the red arrow” (compared to the motionless picture on the left). That is because by Special Relativity distances shorten in the direction of a motion. Now, where will the “top point” (see right side of the picture) be in 12 hours? It will be above the Earth’s surface because the line between the old and the new positions of this moving point should be orthogonal/perpendicular to the Earth axis of rotation, and both positions should be equidistant from the Earth axis (since laws of solid body rotation stay the same). Thus, the observer will observe the wobbling of the Earth. You can even check that at home by making an elliptically shaped flat disk, and see that it wobbles on 180° rotation around an axis other than major-vertical or minor-horizontal axis. That contradicts the non-wobbling statement (1).

We just proved, without using math, that Special Relativity is wrong about length contraction in the direction of a motion! Time dilation does not cause any distance changes. It only causes refraction by Snell’s law explained in Time Matters chapter 1 (the free eBook also available on Amazon). As a result, several Einstein’s formulas require corrections:

• Half of Special Relativity Is Not Needed! (about m, m/s)
• Why Is the Formula for Relativistic Mass Wrong? (about kg)
• Time To Change E=mc² to E=mc²/2 (about Joule)