Can we see Earth in the Past ?

MRPRO03

This might sound a little crazy, anyway, The Earth is around 4.5 bn years old, therefore light from the Earth has been emitted for the same about of time, we understand the space-time can be bent or warped and light can be bent with it, so if we take that principle, could space be bent so much that we can actually see the Earth lights from the past ? (Assuming we had telescopes powerful enough )

BULLER

MRPRO03 wrote: »

This might sound a little crazy, anyway, The Earth is around 4.5 bn years old, therefore light from the Earth has been emitted for the same about of time, we understand the space-time can be bent or warped and light can be bent with it, so if we take that principle, could space be bent so much that we can actually see the Earth lights from the past ? (Assuming we had telescopes powerful enough )

Hell yeah! We just need a warp drive and a 1km diameter telescope and we're a go!
But seriously, if we ever did somehow manipulate space-time as a means to travel faster then light I'm sure it would be an interesting prospect!
Imagine watching history unfold... madness...

KoolKid

As the Galaxy has been spinning all that time if we look across to a far point of the galaxy could we see light from the earth at that time.?

rccaulfield

The light from the earth doesn't get far and the only way nearby beings if there is any nearby know we're here is if we transit in front of our star or cause it to wobble with our gravity. As for bending spacetime artificially to see ourselves well when you bend spacetime with lots of mass enough so that even light can't escape the gravity, thats a black hole, nuff said!

iPlop

I'd Imagine if you could get to the other side of the universe and you had a powerful telescope like hubble, you could point it at earth and see the asteriod that wiped out the dinosaurs ,if you could calculate the distance correctly.

Capt'n Midnight

no you can't

photons would spread out too much by then to get a decent picture

inverse square law , each time you double the distance away the photons are spread over four times as much space

maninasia

Something like gravitational lensing might make it feasible in some form, wouldn't 100% write it off.

abouttobebanned

maninasia wrote: »

Something like gravitational lensing might make it feasible in some form, wouldn't 100% write it off.

Think Aldi have one of those in this week

MRPRO03

maninasia wrote: »

Something like gravitational lensing might make it feasible in some form, wouldn't 100% write it off.

That was the thought that made me think that it was possible.

WalterMitty

KoolKid wrote: »

As the Galaxy has been spinning all that time if we look across to a far point of the galaxy could we see light from the earth at that time.?

it takes 250million years for our solar system to make one orbit of galaxy. It would take light 100,000 years to cross galaxy if it was empty space but light travelling through our galaxy would encounter massive gravitation at centre and gas /planets suns etc elsewhere. Theoreticlly may be possible to see some light from earth's past but close to zero chance of seeing anything that happened .

AugustusMinimus

If our Universe is hyperspherical then if you were to look far enough in one direction, you would see your own back (only if light travelled infinitely fast of course, which it doesn't).

Hence, if the Universe is hyperspherical, it's just a matter of looking deeper into space.

However, as Cap't Midnight has said, the light emitted doesn't have laser like qualities and will be diffused far too much over time.