Peering into the past ?

I will get straight to the point - the centre of our Galaxy is supposedly powered (or not) by a massive black hole, now my proposition goes like this. As light is bounced off the earth from the sun and travels toward this black hole it will be dragged into the mass because of the extreme gravity.
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.
Now I have never seen nor heard of this theory before but its likely that others have thought of it, so I dont want to pretend to be its original proponent. Its also possible that there are tuned viewing points of the earths history through out the solar system that provide a perfect vantage point to see perhaps the earth billions of years ago ?.

Cool Idea

But i think the light will be far too distorted, and will be likely refracted (?) Due to the different wavelengths of light involved, as some will porbably curve more than others, and there would be far too much distortion. I'd like to see more ideas on this its a pretty cool idea.

gravitational lenses are quite well known, so it is possible to have a condition which you describe

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.

However, you can't see the center of the galaxy from here because of the dust clouds in the way. Light would never make it there and back.

Its also possible that there are tuned viewing points of the earths history through out the solar system that provide a perfect vantage point to see perhaps the earth billions of years ago ?.

Not really. You might be able to see the position of the sun, but you couldn't see much of what was going on here on Earth. Remember the "inverse square law" -- the amount of information available decreases by 1/4 every time you double the distance from the source (because light spreads out.(I just WAY oversimplified))

So you probably couldn't see the pro immigration marches in Dallas if you were standing on Pluto (light takes about 5 hours to travel that far.) If you had good instruments, you mgith be able to pick out Dallas, however.

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.

Check out this ATS thread.......its similar to what your thread is about

Project Looking Glass

its a great read !! would be nice to find out its true.