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Early Earth

  • 17-01-2011 11:29am
    #1
    drbeatz
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 40 ✭


    If you could travel faster than the speed of light or get to a place distant enough away lets say 75 million light years away instantly and you had a telescope powerful enough could you witness events like the asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs??

    Also if thats true, given huge technological advancement over the next thousands of years or millions of years could this be a way of learning the history of planets or star we would like to learn about??


Comments

  • #2
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    Only if such means of travel could get past the time dilation problem.

    Your other issue is that 75 million light years is a long, long way from which to be making observations about our sun. In reality we can make much more detailed reconstructions of the history of our star through gathering actual data and samples locally rather than simply viewing it through a "powerful telescope" and watching what's happening.

    We can learn a lot more about the history of Jupiter, for example, by gathering samples and running astronomical calculations, than flying a million light years away and looking at it through a 'scope.


  • #3
    cianl1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 336 ✭✭cianl1


    No because that's already happened.

    EDIT: I retract my statement and submit myself to any admonishment for forgetting special relativity. In my defence, I'm a chemist not a physicist.


  • #4
    FISMA
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,616 ✭✭✭FISMA


    If you had the technology to outrun light, you would still need the technology to gather the light. Light disperses as it travels.

    If you could gather that light and "compress" it so to speak, then why bother trying to outrun it. Chances are that some old signal is bouncing off something far away and heading back.

    Seems like all we have to do is wait for it to return.


  • #5
    Morbert
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,457 ✭✭✭Morbert


    The speed of a ray of light is the same for all observers, so you would never be able to overtake light. However, an alien on a distant planet with a powerful enough telescope would indeed be able to witness the extinction of the dinosaurs. Our current microwave telescopes, for example, allow us to see as far back as about 350 thousand years after the big bang.


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