if a telescope sees into the past does a microscope see into the future?

Question

this is a real question..but feel free to be philosophical

Answer 1

Cool question...right up there with: What happens to sour cream when it goes bad? Does it become sweet cream??

Answer 2

It takes many years for light from a distant star to reach the telescope, so you are seeing that star the way it was many years in the past. But it is not the telescope that causes that, it is the distance of the thing being looked at. The north star is 430 light years away, so when you just look at the north star with your eyes, no telescope, you see it as it was 430 years ago. When a microscope looks at something on a slide, it is a few inches away, and light takes about a billionth of a second to travel that far, so the microscope is looking a billionth of a second into the past. You can never look into the future.

Answer 3

No, and that statement makes no sense. The only reason a telescope sees into the past is because light travels at a certain speed. For instance, if we are looking at a solar system that is 100 light years away, the light we are seeing is 100 years old, and if life were to exist on this planet. Life like ours and with people and everything, and we could see on the surface of this planet then the people that we see on it would already be dead. We would be looking at past events. Light emitted by a microscope doesn't need to travel that far for us to see what we put in that microscope.

Answer 4

Nice thought but no. The viewing device incorporates the time taken for the light to reach the receiver. In the case of the telescope this can be billions of years, hence looking into the past.

With a microscope you are also looking into the past but this will be only a few femtoseconds old.

Answer 5

that's a well good question.......hmmmm no because telescopes see into the past because of the speed it takes light to reach us - ie we can see stars that may already have died. Microscopes don't depend on the light speed issue and are looking at things very small - but not very far away. M'oan the physics.

Answer 6

Literally no of course, as pointed out by my learned colleagues here, it's a speed of light thing. However, many developments that will greatly effect our future, nano technology and sub atomic particle research etc, are indeed only to be seen with a microscope, so maybe figureitively yes. Now I'm off to start an arguement with myself.

Answer 7

They both focus light in much the same way. The only reson that they say the telescope sees into the past in that light take a very long time to get to us from the source

Answer 8

telescope sees into the past? what drugs are you on?
i looked thro a telescope and saw babylon coming for me 3 days ago?????? in that case mayb i should've used you microscope I'd;ve seen them coming next week.
incidentally can i borrow it (seriously)i'll use it to do the lottery
NO

Answer 9

Well sure...if a biologist discovers a totally unknown virus or microbe he might be able to say "If we can't control this thing we could be in trouble sometime in the future."

Answer 10

No. It also looks at the past, an infinitesimally recent past because it takes some nanoseconds for light to reach the eye.