A question about light speed/time

I asked this question on an "Ask a Physicist" forum and was pointed back to the rules/FAQ where they state that hypothetical questions that violate the known laws of physics would not be answered. Dicks.

When we look out at the night sky, we are not seeing those stars as they currently exist. The vast distances involved means that light may have traveled thousands or millions of years before it hit my eyeball & I was able to perceive it. I am looking back in time.

IF i were able to travel much faster than light... And had a sufficiently powerful Telescope... Could i travel out away from Earth and look back and witness events that happened in the distant past?

The formation of the moon? The asteroid that led to the death of the the dinosaurs? Say I had some miraculous Telescope and clear skies and perfect alignment? Could i look back at Earth and witness historical events taking place on the surface?

If the light/information from Earth is expanding outward in a bubble at the speed of light, could i not intercept that bubble at points along its path?

It makes me think of immortality and religious mumbo jumbo. If any of this is possible, then we could "live forever" to an outside observer coasting at the edge of that timeline/bubble. Long after we are gone, the events of our life would still be perceptible. Have I eaten too many magic mushrooms?

a reply to: crunchypeople

Could i travel out away from Earth and look back and witness events that happened in the distant past?

I would guess that you would only be able to view as far back as the time you left...

a reply to: crunchypeople

I would think if you out ran the light from the formation of the moon and stopped, you would see it all happen.

But at the same time, I believe Einstein stated that you cannot go faster than the speed of light.

originally posted by: crunchypeople
I asked this question on an "Ask a Physicist" forum and was pointed back to the rules/FAQ where they state that hypothetical questions that violate the known laws of physics would not be answered. Dicks.

That is the sole reason why I wont even click on that thread anymore.

I think if we were to break light speed, it would be analogous to breaking the sound barrier, only it would put us in another energy state, existing in a medium that is superimposed onto our medium (so called space-time). Put simply, it would put us in another "dimension". From that vantage point, I think it would be possible to look into the past and future.

a reply to: crunchypeople

Since we're talking about hypotheticals, here is an easier way that would not violate the laws a physics and the rules of "Ask a Physicist"...

No need to leave Earth. No need to travel faster than light. Just point your "sufficiently powerful telescope" toward a distant planet or moon that has a mirror angled in just such a way as to reflect light from Earth back to your telescope. By looking into this mirror, you will see the reflection of Earth as it existed in the past. Of course, if the distant planet rotating, you might only get a glancing view based on that planet's "day" duration.

Telescopes work on optics, that is light so if you were traveling faster than the speed of light you couldn't see the light from earth because you'd be traveling faster than it.

You'd have to come to a dead stop.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest

originally posted by: crunchypeople
I asked this question on an "Ask a Physicist" forum and was pointed back to the rules/FAQ where they state that hypothetical questions that violate the known laws of physics would not be answered. Dicks.

I think if we were to break light speed, it would be analogous to breaking the sound barrier, only it would put us in another energy state, existing in a medium that is superimposed onto our medium (so called space-time). Put simply, it would put us in another "dimension". From that vantage point, I think it would be possible to look into the past and future.

Yeah but, if you could travel at the speed of light, then time would cease to exist... so where would you find the time to "look into the past and future", if the time you need to do it, doesn't even exist?

I think its an interesting question, but one that is very hard to answer.

We "know" that if you travel at a different enough rate of velocity relative to Earth, that time will pass differently, but whether or not it will run backwards? Impossible to say.

I suspect something much different would happen than the flow of time changing direction. We think of time flowing "forward" innately, but it might be more accurate to perceive it solely as a specific sequence of events. Meaning, it is seen as objects changing their positions and frames of reference relative to each other. In a sense, we might already be moving backwards towards the "beginning."

Given our current understanding of the speed of light, I suspect that if one were to break beyond it, we might not even be able to parse what we are seeing at all. The structure of the sequence of relativistic events might no longer have a framework that we can even perceive, much less understand.

I think what might happen instead is that it would enable truly instantaneous movement from one point in time and space to another, but the sequence of events would never do more than "pause." While in that other area, we might, may be able to see previous events, if we didn't go crazy first..

But, I think it'd be more likely that it would simply be beyond the limits of our senses. There could be a part of who we are that exists in that space already, but over the course of millions of years of evolution, we rely pretty completely on our senses to make sense of what is around us. Senses that exist solely and completely in a very specific environment and senses that have been shaped and molded in that environment for a very long time.

So basically:

1. Suppose that we can instantly teleport to the MACS0647-JD galaxy, which is 13.3 billion light years away from Earth.

2. We teleport there with a sufficiently powerful telescope.

3. If we pointed the telescope at Earth's coordinates, would we be able to see the events from 13.3 billion years ago?

Am I asking that correctly? Because from this example of mine, I'd imagine that we could only see the light from 13.3 billion years ago. We'd have to keep moving closer to Earth's coordinates in order to see the time periods that came afterwards.

So if you could then instantly teleport to a location that's only 100,000 light years away from Earth with that same telescope, I'd imagine that you'd be able to see the 100,000 year old light from Earth (and thus, the events from 100,000 years ago). Instantly teleport to a location that's 1,000 light years away and you'd probably be able to see the events from 1,000 years ago. Etc etc etc.

originally posted by: crunchypeople
IF i were able to travel much faster than light... And had a sufficiently powerful Telescope... Could i travel out away from Earth and look back and witness events that happened in the distant past?

The way I understand time, I'm thinking no. Because time is personal and you're bound up in it like an atom in a crystal, with you and (perhaps) everyone else in the crystal giving it shape and reality. If you did happen to find a way to essentially pull yourself out of the matrix, all you would find is chaos extending into the "past" and the "future."

But Jack Sarfatti popped up at ATS again. He'd probably know.

I suspect you could maybe look at our sun from x amount of light years away. The earth just doesn't have enough light to reach that far.

a reply to: crunchypeople


Can you see formation of our moon in the case you mention w powerful telescope and being able to travel faster than light?

Answer: No because we are not sufficiently far from it.

If we can be far enough light years from our moon where the light takes the same number of years to travel to that point, the same number of years to date back to the origins of our moon, then you would be able to see it come to be. That is assuming you have a telescope that can capture enough light detail to observe it, which sounds impossible considering the all stuff that is between it.

Also we would not live forever even for them since they can observe it only once, but then beings further away can observe it again, so maybe your right in that sense.

Just a guess.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
So basically:

1. Suppose that we can instantly teleport to the MACS0647-JD galaxy, which is 13.3 billion light years away from Earth.

2. We teleport there with a sufficiently powerful telescope.

3. If we pointed the telescope at Earth's coordinates, would we be able to see the events from 13.3 billion years ago?

Am I asking that correctly? Because from this example of mine, I'd imagine that we could only see the light from 13.3 billion years ago. We'd have to keep moving closer to Earth's coordinates in order to see the time periods that came afterwards.

So if you could then instantly teleport to a location that's only 100,000 light years away from Earth with that same telescope, I'd imagine that you'd be able to see the 100,000 year old light from Earth (and thus, the events from 100,000 years ago). Instantly teleport to a location that's 1,000 light years away and you'd probably be able to see the events from 1,000 years ago. Etc etc etc.

Correct,


The teleport "if instant" and to a point that was say 500,000 light years away we would see earth as it was 500,000 years ago plius minus a percentage.

The teleport would take you past the light that had departed earth and so you would be "ahead" of it and able to view..


OP, very cool idea, and keeping in mind the Universe is 13.5 "ish" Billions years old (best guess) and as earth is 4.5 billion years old (best guess) we could in theory see our whole solar system taking shape..

RA

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

I think time is a spatial dimension, very analogous to the 3rd dimension, so all we need to do is find a way to disconnect from the 3D so that we can freely move in the 4D, but I don't think it can be achieved in any kind of "ship". It would have to be soul travel.

originally posted by: slider1982
OP, very cool idea, and keeping in mind the Universe is 13.5 "ish" Billions years old (best guess) and as earth is 4.5 billion years old (best guess) we could in theory see our whole solar system taking shape.

Could try Remote Viewing, but that will just result in the universe getting older faster.

a reply to: AnonymousCitizen

wouldn't it take the same amount of light speed to come back to your scope? Meaning you would be seeing the present?

As someone mentioned, you would be leaving away from earth at the speed of light, the same speed light ls moving from earth so you would only see the present at all times.



I always wondered. Since time is different for those moving at the speed of light vs those watching you move at the speed of light (you would appear slower to them), how then is light moving at the speed of light and not appearing to stand still or move slower? We perceive it moving at the speed of light.

a reply to: slider1982

I think the OP is throwing everyone off by using the example of "traveling faster than light" to get to the desired locations. It's seemingly taking the conversation in a different direction from the overall point.

Now that I think about it, other lifeforms in the Universe would have the same problem when looking at our solar system. Depending on the distance, our solar system would appear to be still in its formation or completely lifeless.

So...while traveling superluminal at some point you would cross the interface of subluminal and superluminal. At that point you would experience image pair annihilation (or creation). The G-force alone would kill you anyways...so maybe the afterlife could provide you a glimpse into the past or future depending on whatever the heck happens after death.

originally posted by: crunchypeople
IF i were able to travel much faster than light... And had a sufficiently powerful Telescope... Could i travel out away from Earth and look back and witness events that happened in the distant past?

You definitely could if you were able to.

But you're not so you can't.

It's an interesting question and pointed me down the rabbit hole of time dilation.
The faster you go the quicker your watch moves in comparison to those that are still.

It makes no sense that your clock would keep speeding up the quicker you went and then suddenly drop to zero and then eventually go backwards. Imagine putting stones on a pile, how many stones would you have to place until there are zero stones(assuming you start with 1)?

Of course that's just my extremely uneducated opinion.

My initial thought was that time dilation would mean you would have all the answers but no one to share them with when you return to the planet of the apes or whatever our distant future holds.

Unfortunately the physics nerds are correct here and it's not really an answerable question.