posted on Apr, 13 2006 @ 07:00 AM
Originally posted by Byrd
Originally posted by mazzroth
What if there is an orbit/ecliptal radius that the light is gravitationally hooked back to the earth like a planet captured by a sun.
I don't think that light can be distorted that much.
Actually, I think it can Byrd - but mind you, it's not an easy balance to achieve. A nice thing about objects that have width and gravity is that a
mass will affect one side of that object moreso than the other side. This means that "orbits" are easier to achieve with massive objects than with
massless objects.
Now, a photon could presumably be "slingshoted" around a black hole - but it would have to come very close to the blackhole for that to take place,
and be at just the right distance from it that it was pulled all the way around without having a course that would eventually lead it into the black
hole (since the light travels in a perfectly straight line and it's space itself that's distorted).
So, yeah, although it would be unlikely, a nearby observer to a black-hole - if they stay there long enough (the distance the light might have to be
from the black hole to encounter such a significant distortion might also mean a similarily massive time-dialation) - may eventually see themselves
staring back at them.
Actually, there IS a theory that a lot of the galaxies that we see in our universe - the reason it looks so endless - is because most of those other
galaxies are just these kinds of "reflections" of our own cluster or supercluster of galaxies whose light has travelled back to us, either through
gravitational slingshoting, or have travelled 4-dimensionally to behind us rather than infront of us.
So perhaps there's not billions and billions of galaxies, but really just a few hundred or thousand, and then reflected a whole lot.
And since there's no edge to the universe, just like there's no edge to the outside of a basketball (you could travel around it indefinitely), it
actually could exist.