We consider the question of determining the optical drift effects in general relativity, i.e. the rate of change of the apparent position, redshift, Jacobi matrix, angular distance and luminosity distance of a distant object as registered by an observer in an arbitrary spacetime. We present a fully relativistic and covariant approach, in which the problem is reduced to a hierarchy of ODE's solved along the line of sight. The 4-velocities and 4-accelerations of the observer and the emitter and the geometry of the spacetime along the line of sight constitute the input data. We build on the standard relativistic geometric optics formalism and extend it to include the time derivatives of the observables. In the process we obtain two general, non-perturbative relations: the first one between the gravitational lensing, represented by the Jacobi matrix, and the apparent position drift, also called the cosmic parallax, and the second one between the apparent position drift and the redshift drift. The applications of the results include the theoretical study of the drift effects of cosmological origin (so-called real-time cosmology) in numerical or exact Universe models.

We present a time-dependent solution of the Maxwell equations in the Einstein universe, whose electric and magnetic fields, as seen by the stationary observers, are aligned with the Clifford parallels of the 3-sphere S 3 . The conformal equivalence between Minkowski's spacetime and (a region of) the Einstein cylinder is then exploited in order to obtain a knotted, finite energy, radiating solution of the Maxwell equations in flat spacetime. We also discuss similar electromagnetic fields in expanding closed Friedmann models, and compute the matter content of such configurations.

We show that in the conformally flat case the Penrose inequality is satisfied for the Schwarzschild initial data with a small addition of the axially symmetric traceless exterior curvature. In this class the inequality is saturated only for data related to special sections of the Schwarzschild spacetime.

We show that the Penrose inequality is satisfied for a class of conformally flat axially symmetric nonmaximal perturbations of the Schwarzschild data. A role of horizon is played by a marginally outer trapped surface which does not have to be minimal.

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