If we're looking at a planet 50,000 light years away through a telescope,are we seeing backward in time?

Question

Please give scientific data to support your answer.

Answer 1

Yes, we're seeing what happened to/on that planet 50,000 years ago. Light years are a measure of distance, not time; one light year is the distance that light travels in one year. Therefore, the light we're seeing from that certain planet left that planet 50,000 years ago. It's like looking back in time.

Answer 2

Like everyone said, yeah because you see that planet as it was 50,000 years ago.

ontopofoldsmokie: The telescope isn't going to get you closer to the planet, so even looking through the most powerful telescope that shows you every possible detail of the planet, you're still looking at it 50,000 years ago. The telescope only magnifies the image.

Answer 3

I'm not into astronomy but wouldn't the light we see now be looking into the past? Light that has been travelling for 50,000 years?

By using a telescope to look at the planet directly aren't you looking at what is happening now? Or, at least 'younger' light.

Answer 4

that's the idea, (and that's what a lot of people think, including a lot of astronomers), but it doesn't work quite that way, because, very likely, that planet wasn't there 50,000 years ago, nothing was, cause the universe didn't exist yet then, it wasn't created yet.

Also, generally a mere planet that far away wouldn't be visible from the earth (or the Hubble), but a star that far away would.

How is this possible? Well, the objects ARE that far away, very likely, but it's very possible (and right now, the likeliest scenario that has yet been proposed), that cataclysmic events during creation week sped up time (not light, light's speed is essentially constant),
but time was sped up so that millions of years of time were passing in space (in their own frame-of-reference) while only 6 days were passing here on earth (in its own reference frame).

below is a link to an article explaining it by one of the world's top astrophysicists

Answer 5

We are seeing where some light particles reflected from the planet have travelled to as of right now. You see things as light strikes your retina from things that may be far away or close. A telescope does not morph your retina out 50,000 light years. It focusses light that has become so dispersed that your retina would not detect it as it strikes your retina.

Answer 6

You're seeing 50,000 year old light and the position of the star is not the same as where it actually is in the sky today at a closer distance.

Answer 7

Yes. You're seeing light from the planet that left 50,000 yrs ago. If the planet was to explode this very instant, we would not know about until 50,000 yrs from now..

Answer 8

Everything you see happens in the past. Whether when you look at yourself in the mirror, watching the traffic passing you bye on the road, or looking at a distance celestial object. The light takes time to get to you eye. Now, of course, when your looking at urself in the mirror you are seeing yourself as your were micro seconds ago, however, in the bigger sense of things, You are viewing EVERYTHING in the past.

I hope this helps you understand

Answer 9

the only element incorrect which incorporate your question is which you're seeing the planet because it replaced into one hundred years in the past, no longer one hundred mild years in the past. a mild year is a distance, no longer time. which would be like asserting you assert it 2,000 miles in the past. different than that, you're splendid. If an alien destroyed it the following day, you does no longer know approximately it for one hundred years.

Answer 10

yes. the distances between the stars are enormous. even at the speed of light it would take 50,000 years for the photons to travel the distance. our star, the sun, is 93,000,000 miles away but it still takes 8 minutes for it's light to reach us. so, that would mean the light from the star you mention would have to travel about 24,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles