Time Travel with a Telescope?

I find myself pondering this when I'm really baked....suppose you were looking at another planet...say 50 light years from earth with a VERY powerfull telescope...the laws of physics say you would be seeing what was happening there 50 yrs in its (the planet) past...NOW suppose there is a MIRROR on that planet reflecting your image back to you (for the sake of argument it would act as telescope as well)....you would see earth as 50 yrs in the past right?...pretty mind bending!...and if you could focus down to street level..would you actually see people walking/driving around??

That would be totally trippy

Well I guess you would see earth 100 yrs in the past..that would be WILD!

theoretically i geuss that would be true. if you could somehow view ...no, cause the way it works is not that you see the planet 50 years in its past. Okay.

The reason that we would perceive the planet as much older than it is, is because the visible light rays have taken time to cross the universe and eventually arrive at our planet. The planet itself is still in the present (ours as well as its own). The common conception of viewing (which I think you may be using right now) is that we see things outwards from ourselves. Really what happens is that the light travels to our eyes, and then we process and interpert it into images.

Technically, this would only be possible if you traveled, say 50 lightyears away from the earth. Then the light reaching you would be from 50 years ago. However, as it would take you much longer than 50 years to travel 50 lightyears, you would actually be seeing into the "future", according to your own personal standards. Yet if you just remained on Earth, you would see that progress and more, so it's not really plausible.


...sorry to burst your bubble...
(but that's just according to science anyway.........

no, if supposing there were a mirror telescope with a mirror image of our planet, you would see what was happening in that mirror fifty years ago from that planet, but that would also take 50 years for any light from earth to travel to that mirror so it would essentially be a window into our past 100 years ago.

you know what's crazy... the milky way galaxy, by popular estimation anyway is about 100,000 light years in diameter.

that is, at least to me, incomprehensibly large.
god what i wouldn't give to be a mayan.

anyone else try to diffuse their atoms and travel through space time?

hahahaha... I try to do it every day.
true stoner.

No, because everything is still in the present. But anyways, i'm not stoned enough to seriously debate this now, and it still wouldn't be time travel, because you would not be moving through time. it'd be time "viewing".

it doesnt matter... everything is happening in the present... but if we were to view a planet 50 light years away, we'd see it only as fast as the light could travel. we'd see it in it's solar orbit 50 years previous to where it is now. it's suns galactic orbit 50 some odd years from where it is now. you can't argue with space time.

If you look at something across the room all you're REALLY seeing is reflected light anyway!...Hypothetically it will work...but you have to consider that the lense compressing that distance would also "collect" every bit of dust along the way which would probably block any view you had...

quadrophine said:

it doesnt matter... everything is happening in the present... but if we were to view a planet 50 light years away, we'd see it only as fast as the light could travel. we'd see it in it's solar orbit 50 years previous to where it is now. it's suns galactic orbit 50 some odd years from where it is now. you can't argue with space time.

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...that's exactly what i was saying. that's why you can't see the earth in the past like that. i dunno why you're trying to debunk my arguement with my arguement...

4ad said:

If you look at something across the room all you're REALLY seeing is reflected light anyway!...Hypothetically it will work...but you have to consider that the lense compressing that distance would also "collect" every bit of dust along the way which would probably block any view you had...

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hypothetically, i geuss. as the light would take 50 years to get to the planet, then 50 to get back...however you wouldn't actually get a clear view, becuase if you think about it, how much can you even see of the planets in our own solar system? most of the images procured are either from the space mission things that photograph stuff, or from non-visible radiation. it's weird, but i geuss your hypothetical situation would kinda work...(i just wasn't high enough to get over the reality and be amazed by the concept...)

moot point.
take some time to learn about general relativity.
It's not hypothetically. hypothetically implies that you merely expect that result. even though it's a non-reality it's an absolute fact, that if you look through a mirror 50 light years away, positioned to reflect back towards you. you would see where you stand 100 years in the past.
no need to get over reality. it doesn't get any more real than that.

just use the moon as a micro example...light takes what...maybe 2 sec to reach us from there...looking thru a telescope at someone walking there...you would see them 2 sec in their past....just extrapolate that out to 50 light years...the physics don't change,just the technology. I think there is a Hubble image where they focused it to "infinity" and started to actually see the beginning of the universe...the stars were VERY clustered with a very bright light in the middle (big bang)
Of course you wouldn't see the earth exactly where it was when you are viewing it without coordinating the orbit or having the mirror with a tracking device of some sort.

I brought this up over a blunt last night because it interested me that much, and my friends and i decided that those who said it couldnt happen were just naysayers

4ad said:

just use the moon as a micro example...light takes what...maybe 2 sec to reach us from there...looking thru a telescope at someone walking there...you would see them 2 sec in their past....just extrapolate that out to 50 light years...the physics don't change,just the technology. I think there is a Hubble image where they focused it to "infinity" and started to actually see the beginning of the universe...the stars were VERY clustered with a very bright light in the middle (big bang)
Of course you wouldn't see the earth exactly where it was when you are viewing it without coordinating the orbit or having the mirror with a tracking device of some sort.

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I geuss this is the point i was trying to make...sort of...i dunno, i don't doubt the idea. i geuss i'm just dissuaded because there's not even an inkling of an idea on how to build this reflecty telescope mirror thing. lol. that's the part i'm debating against (even though i do recognize you guys admitted that that was not possible at the moment...sorry, dunno why i'm disagreeing....)

this is the good type of deep thinking i like when im stoned ...expand your minds.
the only reason they dont want it legal is so we cant see the truth...

Just debating theory really...Its impractical as HELL....getting the telescope to the other planet even at the speed of light would take 50 yrs...even if we had a fellow stoner on the other planet to set one up...it would take 50 yrs to communicate with them!!

I was just thinking, man, it would really suck to have to set up that mirror. That's a lot of responsiblity. And to catch that picture on earth's end is also a lot of eponsibility. Considering we recently broke the speed of light, I say we go a LITTLE faster than that and cull some years.

Broke the speed of light??? where did ya hear that?

yeah, talk about impractical as hell...lol. (good idea though mate..now that i think about it, i have had that idea before. but my dad just told me that it wasn't possible and was basically like no, stop talking. I'd say i was like 8??? idk. elementary school age, when i first learned about all that kind of stuff with light and images, etc.)

I wanna see this evidence of breaking the speed of light...someone disproved Einstein's theory?

The "mirror" would have had to existed 50 years before you busted out your lil hubble

right?