Do you think it's possible if your on a planet 1,000 light years away you could look at earth through a really really strong telescope(even though one couldn't see that far)you could see earth 1,000 years ago? Do you think It's possible?
Why wouldn't it be? If you looked at the sun (please don;t you might go blind) you see it 5 minutes ago because that is how long light takes to travel 1AU. (I think it is 5 mins anyway) If you magically teleported to Proxima Centauri in an instant and looked at Earth through a rally good telescope you would see February 2005.
Ok I thought so my theguitarhero777's mom told me about this I just wasn't sure if it was real. And I thoughtthe sun would be 7 mins away but it doesn't really matter.
Pixie, it is actually 8 minutes, because the distance from the earth to the sun is around ~93 million miles, and the speed of light is 299,792,458 meter per second in an ideal vacuum. So the speed of light is around 186,282.4 miles per second. Therefore it takes light about 499 seconds or 8.2 Minutes to reach earth. thought I'd clear that up
now to the topic
The nearest star is alpha centari, 4.3 ish light years away, if you look at it tonight, you are looking at what it was 4.3 years ago.
think about it this way, if the sun burned out right now at this moment, you would realize it 8 minutes from now.
thanks DDX I wasn't entirely sure I learnt it years ago so I think 5 mins is the number they gove to kids because 8 might confuse them
If you trust Drake and his wquation on thelikely hood of inteligent life in the universe then on average 2 planets with inteligent life forms on would be about 200 light years apart. so if a alien species had, to quote you paintballer222, a really really strong telescope they wouldn't see us know they would see early 19th earth. If they contacted us (instantly) they may comment on our excellent mastery of whale oil or Napoleans victory against the Austrians at the Battle of Abensberg. (which to the aliens would have happened 4 days ago (14th April 1809)) (obviously this is a hyperinteligent race of aliens)
I just remember what I read, which is why I'm going to Yale University this fall.
The speed of light is what my professor wants all of us to remember, so he basically beat that into us.
Again, this is all theory, if the aliens some how built a transporter (not that guy in the transporter movie....) where it would break down particles and beam it to another gate near earth, it would take the particles (light happens to be a particle and a wave) around 1000 years to reach the gate near earth. Then they would be quite confused.... And I don't know where I am going with this.
What if we managed to come to them? In fantasies alien races are always made super-advanced, but maybe we're the advanced ones. Anyway, a little off topic, but...
What if we managed to come to them? In fantasies alien races are always made super-advanced, but maybe we're the advanced ones. Anyway, a little off topic, but...
That would be interesting also. I just said come to us because at this point in time that isn't possible, so if we were to interact with an alien species at the present it would be them coming to us.
Well, not trying to be a fun-killer, but how are we suppose to get to a planet 1000 Light-Years away? Even if we develope some type of technology Millions of years later, we would still take 1000 years to get to that planet. That means we also need a new type of technology to make us live about 935 more years.
thanks DDX I wasn't entirely sure I learned it years ago so I think 5 mins is the number they gave to kids because 8 might confuse them
really? I was taught that it was 8 minutes when I was in the 2nd grade. Although it is always bad for teachers to give you inaccurate info at a young age,because the truth might confuse you at that time. Mainly because it might truly confuse you later when you learn the real facts. That or make you look like an idiot because someone didn't give you the real facts. Also yes it is true that we can see things going on, on other planets, that happened years ago. We had to recently review this in an Earth Science course I am taking(although I found out earlier this year that I could have taken chemistry this year) Still overall the answer to the original question this is based off of is true. Also you can see the past by looking at Google Earth, because the images taken are not always up to date.
