The news reports that a telescope can see an event that happened thousands of years ago. Seems to me that the telescope could only enhance light that is reaching earth.
2006-08-31 08:08:21 · 11 answers · asked by Mark 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
They don't look back in time, it is just that the light they capture took so long to reach us that it occurred (up to) billions of years ago.
2006-08-31 12:47:09 · answer #1 · answered by Amphibolite 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You don't need a telescope to look back in time. Go outside and look to Andromeda. Find Beta (get out a star char for this) and look for a star just to the northwest (near Nu Andromedae). Next to this star is a fuzzy patch. This is the famous Andromeda Galaxy, almost 3 million light-years from Earth, visible without any optical aid if you are away from city lights (otherwise you will need binoculars). When you look at this you are looking back 3 million years in time, even with just your own two eyes.
In the far future the distance gap will be much less, as our Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course.
2006-09-01 14:35:02 · answer #2 · answered by Search first before you ask it 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you are looking at an object 10 light years away, then it took that image 10 years to reach you - hence you are seeing something that happened 10 years ago. You are used to thinking of vision as 'instant' because in our day to day lives, we see things so close to the time they happen. Over vast differances, that's not the case. The more powerful the telescope, the further - and hence further back in time - it sees.
2006-08-31 15:12:12 · answer #3 · answered by kheserthorpe 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is the nature of what sight is. If you are seeing an event it has already happened and you are now observing a past occurrence. Hence since all of the stellar observances are taking place 1000's of light years away, we by virtue of sight are observing the universe as it was in the past and not the present. All astronomers and past occurrences and calculating what the universe looked like years ago. As when we observe the sun today all information is 8 min. old. So we can see what the sun was in the past and not right now. In closing:
Everything you see is a past event, the distance to that event determines how old the information is.
2006-08-31 15:19:23 · answer #4 · answered by DB 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Because light travels at a large but finite speed, it takes time for light to cover large distances. Thus, when we see the light of very distant objects in the universe, we are actually seeing light emitted from them a long time ago: we see them literally as they were in the distant past.
In comparison, the Sun is only about 8 light-minutes away. So the light we see from the Sun represents what the Sun looked like 8 minutes ago, and we must wait another 8 minutes to see what it looks like "now".
When we see Saturn at the telescope ..the light from the planet is from 60 minuits ago .
How far is far? Lets look at the time it takes for light from a Galaxy to hit our eye .
Light from these faraway galaxies began traveling to Earth billions of years ago, long before humans roamed our planet. On Earth, light seems to travel instantly from place to place. We see the light from a lamp the moment we turn it on because light travels fast. Light from the distant galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field also travels fast. Those galaxies are so far away, however, that it takes a long time for their light to reach Earth. We see the galaxies, therefore, as they appeared billions of years ago !
2006-08-31 15:53:01 · answer #5 · answered by spaceprt 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Simple answer. Light travels at 186,000 mps (miles per second). Even light from our own sun left the sun just over eight minutes ago. You can do the math to figure out how far the sun is away. Now our next closest star is over for light years away. I'll do the math for you on this one. 60 seconds in a minute. 60 minutes in a hour which is 3,600 seconds. 365 days in a standard year. That factors to 1,314,000 seconds a year. TImes four years is 5,256,000 seconds. So that makes the next closest star 977,616,000,000 mile away. (Yes I know my math isn't exact! Sue me. But it gets the point across)
2006-08-31 16:25:12 · answer #6 · answered by SRIGWilliams 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
consider light takes time to travel. If you look at the far away space, what you observed is the distance light emitted from long time ago.
Just like sun light, what you feel is about 8 minutes ago from the sun. As light need 8 minutes to travel from the surface of the sun to the surface of Earth.
2006-08-31 15:13:00 · answer #7 · answered by Just_curious 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The reason they say that is with a telescope you can see more distant objects that you couldn't with your naked eye. More powerful the telescope the more you are looking back.
2006-08-31 15:53:40 · answer #8 · answered by worldneverchanges 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
In the movie "Paycheck", the future-viewing device was a lens so powerful it could bend light "all the way around the universe", thus allowing the future to be seen.
2006-08-31 15:27:06 · answer #9 · answered by r0bErT4u 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
As we see objects that are further and further away, we are actually looking back in time - back to the beginning of the universe
2006-08-31 15:18:12 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋