An intriguing question?

Question

If it takes 8 minutes for the sunlight to reach earth, then we're seeing the radiance of the sun which was reflected 8 minutes ago, or in short we are seeing the sun how it was 8 minutes ago in the sky. Does that mean that we are seeing and living in the past?

Answer 1

Nope -

The light was emitted in the past - but we are seeing real time reflections of light from objects around us. Think of yourself in an office. The light reflected off your desk is probably coming from an artificial light. This is close to you - so what you are seeing is a pretty instantaneous reflection of light.

You need to think in terms of the time taken for 'reflected' light to reach your eyes. Very quick!

Answer 2

Yes.

In a way, we're always living in the past. Even the light that's coming from my computer monitor takes a (very small) amount of time to reach my eyes and be processed by my brain. Everything I know is based on signal transmission + comprehension time.

The light coming from other stars is years away. Look at the night sky, and you're seeing a picture from long ago.

Answer 3

Yes,

In fact, much of astronomy depends on this. As you look at objects farther away, you're seeing farther into the past. If you look far enough away, you'll see the beginning of the universe. It's kind of hard to wrap you're mind around, but it sounds cool.

Another example is from the book Battlefield Earth. Shortly after the movie ends (about halfway through the book), they send a camera into space near the bad guys planet. They calculate how far light would have traveled from the day they teleported the nukes there. By teleporting the camera to that distance they can watch what happened on that day.

In theory if you had a good enough camera, and the ability to teleport it, you could send make all kind of historical films. Pop one back a 150 million years and you get pictures of dino's.

Answer 4

Not Reflected light, but Radiated light. and no, it doesn't mean you are living in the past, it means you are seeing light that left the sun 8 minutes ago, when you were thinking of this question on earth.

Answer 5

I don't think so though the light that we get is 8 minutes old when it falls on something and reflects we see it instantly so only the direct light that we see is 8 mins old but the light that has been reflected is just seconds old as it takes some time to reach our eyes.

Answer 6

The PRESENT is where you are. It takes you a minute to go to your neighbor's house. But is he living in a different time?
Time is what you make of it, past present and future are just interpretations of the same time from different points of view.
If you want to travel through time, by a airline ticket and fly a few days around the world. Time is different for you afterwards. There was en experiment conducted quite some time ago with two identical atomic clocks. one stationery on ground, one flying for some time in a plane. Guess what: the time difference according to Einstein's theory of relativity was there and measurable which proved Einstein's theory: Movement changes the passing of time. With speeds near c (speed of light) time for the moving object is almost frozen. When you move to your neighbor's house at light speed no time would have passed for you but for your neighbor it still took you c x the distance (which will be close to zero but not quite that.).
When moving faster than light you would arrive just before you left. Freaky, isn't it?!

Answer 7

Not just that, the stars we see are also 'in the past'. Some stars are millions of light years away. The light which we see now left the star that many years back.

Answer 8

You cant see into the future. The present is too short to think about. The only thing "real " to us is the past. Sometimes its the very recent past,like when you asked the question or when I just wrote that or any way back with our faulty prejudiced memory.

Answer 9

Not us but we are seeing the Sun as it was 8 minutes earlier.

Likewise if we saw Alpha Centauri explode we would know the event actually occured 4.5 years ago!

Answer 10

I watched that show as well. Don't forget the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. Those people killed themselves in order to be picked up by a spaceship that they believed was in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. I think that I am fascinated by these strange cults because I can't understand what causes people to fall completely under the spell of these charlatans. I find it incomprehensible that people will believe and do anything that their cult leader tells them, including murder, suicide, and even killing their own children. Perhaps they are so dissatisfied with their lives that even a crazed leader gives them something to believe in, a sense of purpose, however misguided.