Thread: Just think....

Originally Posted by maniclion

If we could travel faster than light, go 2000 light years away and had a very powerful telescope we could look into the past and see events on Earth 2000 years ago. I was tripping on this while staring at a ship on the horizon thinking about how I was seeing that ships image as it was in the past and not how it would look if I were a few feet from it, only a fractional millisecond but still, when you look at the moon thats like 1.3 seconds in the past....

I have a feeling someday we will be able to zoom out to random distances and do historical research this way, go back and watch D-day 67 light years away, thats where Voyager 2 was in 1994......

wouldnt you then have to travel considerably faster than light so you could "pass" the images you are trying to observe? and wouldnt the reflection of the past be affected by other waves of light, darkness and so on?

interesting stuff

stephen hawkings states that time travel to the future is possible but not backwards, something to do with the timeline I think. you would have to go back to another dimension.

Originally Posted by LAM

stephen hawkings states that time travel to the future is possible but not backwards, something to do with the timeline I think. you would have to go back to another dimension.

I'm talking about peering into the past, we do it everytime we look at the stars....

When I was in 2nd grade we went outside to watch an Eclipse, if we had a ultra-powerful telescope that could go faster than light they could go out 26 light years and focus on the playground of Horn Elementary and see me at 8 years old staring up at the sky through those sunglasses made from dehydrated ice cream wrappers(the space blanket semi opaque stuff they wrap poptarts in now...)

Hrm, I guess technically this is true, but I would think a light source would have to be strong enough to transcend that much space and we would need a method to intensely magnify said light rays.

For instance, when you look at the sun, you're seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. The next closest star is looking about 8.5 years ago. If you could travel significantly faster than the speed of light and travel ahead of it, then use some type of device/telescope that could magnify the light rays/image of the past, you would theoretically be able to do just this. I guess it does blow your mind to think that somewhere in the infinity of space, there is a projection of light of this very moment for all eternity. Or more simply, you as a child or dinosaurs or what have you.

The problem being, of course, that you will need a telescope that can see trillions of light years away (and more depending on how far back in time you're wanting to see, possibly trillion, trillions) at an image as a microscope might be seeing a cell.

Also, and this is my own ignorance, but I want to say that light probably dissipates at some point. A star can be seen millions of light years away, but it is a very powerful source and even still some stars are brighter. Obviously these light rays must transform into something, but as such you may now need something to actually convert these energy rays back to a former state and still magnify them.

Originally Posted by maniclion

when you look at the moon thats like 1.3 seconds in the past....

This got me to thinking, if the moon came crashing into the planet and you were standing there to watch it from beginning to end, at some point the moon would go from 1.3 seconds into the past to .000000000000000000...01 second into the past. How would this transition look?

Originally Posted by Crono1000

Also, and this is my own ignorance, but I want to say that light probably dissipates at some point. A star can be seen millions of light years away, but it is a very powerful source and even still some stars are brighter. Obviously these light rays must transform into something, but as such you may now need something to actually convert these energy rays back to a former state and still magnify them.

space is a vacuum the lack of any medium does not cause dissipation of the light wave but when they hit an obstacle they are diffracted around it and some may be absorbed into that medium depending on it's physical characteristics.

think of how a Ethernet signal travels over a segment of category cat5 cabling. the signal is independent of the medium used to carry it but the physical properties of the cabling cause dissipation of that signal so it has to be regenerated every 300 ft.

Originally Posted by LAM

space is a vacuum the lack of any medium does not cause dissipation of the light wave but when they hit an obstacle they are diffracted around it and some may be absorbed into that medium depending on it's physical characteristics.

think of how a Ethernet signal travels over a segment of category cat5 cabling. the signal is independent of the medium used to carry it but the physical properties of the cabling cause dissipation of that signal so it has to be regenerated every 300 ft.

So what does this mean? That this would be possible as long as there are no obstructions between Earth and the trillions of lightyears ahead that we need to be?

Originally Posted by Crono1000

So what does this mean? That this would be possible as long as there are no obstructions between Earth and the trillions of lightyears ahead that we need to be?

Einsteins theory of general relativity has never been solved for calculating gravitational forces/field on objects moving at or near light speed. i'm not sure why Hawkings never tackled this but Felber has approached it.

Felber found achieving light speed causes many problems since the closer the mass gets to it the more power is needed accelerate the mass to negate the opposing forces that lie in front of that object, yes another freaking catch 22.

drafting a star is probably a more realistic approach for now even once we get to achieving 40% of light speed. still seems like worm holes would be the best solution for space travel. also the GIGANTIC problem with mapping and navigation at those speeds. we all now how slight changes in trajectory effect a bullet at various distance so image applying that at light speeds....

If we had a telescope that was approx 65,000,001 light years away from earth we could witness the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution.

It would be great if we could oneday solve the mystery of who built the pyramids. Science comes out with a load of bs theories as to how they were constructed however we couldn't construct those again with today's technology. This sounds like a parroted cliched argument but its true.

It's pretty much moot. Humans will never be able to create any type of vehicle that could travel at the speed of light.

Originally Posted by GearsMcGilf

It's pretty much moot. Humans will never be able to create any type of vehicle that could travel at the speed of light.

YEAH! ...and the earth is flat..

They wouldnt have to fly at the speed of light if they would figure out how to manipulate time.

Originally Posted by Gissurjon

YEAH! ...and the earth is flat..

They wouldnt have to fly at the speed of light if they would figure out how to manipulate time.

This.

Perceive that time is simply a perception of the human mind, as is our five senses. The things you see, smell, feel, hear, and taste are simply data processed from the space around you. Your computer monitor will exist whether you are there to look at it or not, and the rays of light will bounce off of it whether you are there to perceive color from them or not. Our brains have developed a mechanism to translate those light rays and communion of nuerons for you to know what the shit is in front of you, its color, its feel, its scent, etc.

Now imagine you don't have those mechanisms. All shit is still there, even the shit in space you will never see or touch. THE SHIT IS STILL THERE!

Perhaps we perceive time in the much the same way. It's a thing, but perceive it as a working, rolling temporality. It could very well be an all one-instance, or all-instance, but our minds perceive it as ongoing. For all we know it's circular, which is a common theory, and we'll do it all again for the first time.

Then there is, of course, the time-is-a-hologram theory.

time is definitely a "not normal" function of the mind, this is seen across many different types of animals. it is something that we all learn and interpret slightly differently.

read a study once that was done on humming birds. they had natural flowers which replenish nector in 24 hours, so the birds only came to these once a day. then they had fake flowers which gave out nectar every 10 minutes, they adjusted their behavior to these flowers in a rather short period of time and stuck to once a day with the others.