OK, so I need more confirmation on this than anyhting...When we look up at the sun (ok kids thats not a smart thing to do) we see a time variance of 7 mins cause I guess its 7 light minutes away, but if you had a planet 30,000,000 light years away and we could see it, we wouldn't see the up to the second status of things right?....we'd see how the planet was 30,000,000 yrs ago....or does a telescope compensate for that somehow....
2007-03-28 03:26:32 · 13 answers · asked by dabliss74 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
OK, so I need more confirmation on this than anyhting...When we look up at the sun (ok kids thats not a smart thing to do) we see a time variance of 7 mins cause I guess its 7 light minutes away, but if you had a planet 30,000,000 light years away and we could see it, we wouldn't see the up to the second status of things right?....we'd see how the planet was 30,000,000 yrs ago....or does a telescope compensate for that somehow.... ok so whatever dinos died out 65 million yrs ago...that was not my point I just wanted confirmation that if we had a strong enough telescope (say that could see 15 billion light yrs) that we could see the big bang, and you have answered my question...thanks!
2007-03-28 13:54:48 · update #1
You would see the earth the way it looked 30,000,000 years ago if not for the glair of our sun which would prevent you from seeing it.
when we find extrasolar planets we dont actually see the planet. We see the wabble of the parent star as the planet interacts with it.
dinos have been gone for 65,000,000 years so the answer is no you would not see them.
2007-03-28 04:05:42 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is impossible for a telescope to compensate for time. The speed of light is a basic fundamental law of physics and it is impossible for any useful information to travel faster, by any means. No telescope, nor any other instrument, could possibly make up for the time lost.
However, someone looking at the Earth from 30 million light years away would not see dinosaurs. Why? Well, mostly because dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago; the observers would be late by about 35 million years.
If we have a star, say, 90 million light years away or so, such that it can look at the Earth as it was when dinosaurs were still around, then theoretically yes they would be catching photons that bounced off dinosaurs. However, due to the vast distances involved, so few photons would reach them that it would be almost impossible to make out the image of a dinosaur. It has been suggested that they would need a telescope several million kilometers wide to get even just a fuzzy image.
2007-03-28 03:35:56 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
Telescope or not we never see anything as it is at this moment. Even when you are standing right in front of someone talking to them you are seeing them as they were a tiny fraction of time prior to this present instant. That is the simple fundamental way the universe operates. Light travels at a finite speed (186,000 miles per second) although it is an extremely fast speed it is still a speed so it takes some time (a tiny amount of time at that distance) to travel to your eyes. The larger the distance to an object you are seeing, the longer it takes light to travel that distance. We don't notice this time delay until things get really far away, such as other planets and stars. Then we begin to encounter time delays of minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. But the fundamental fact is that we cannot ever experience something as it is happening at the same instant it is happening. IT will always be some time element later.
2007-03-28 04:20:22 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well like everybody said Dinosaurs died about 65 million years ago so they would be a little late.
Frankly speaking though, whether they see dinosaurs or not does not concern either us or them. Obviously the people looking at us will not be actually be able to predict what was happening at that present time, thirty million years ahead of what they were seeing. Also, since there would be no way of establishing adequate contact with the other planet (eg: radio waves travelling at the speed of light would reach us 60 million years later from what they are seeing.), it is of no use to us or them. I think.
2007-03-28 04:22:31 · answer #4 · answered by Anon. 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, when you look out with a telescope, you do see things as they were in the past.
This is a great thing for astronomy, because we can actually see most of the way back to the Big Bang, and see the first stars form and the first galaxies, etc. (provided the telescope is powerful enough). The large-scale uniformity of the Universe assures that the first stars that we see forming 13 billion lightyears away are similar to the first stars that formed right here, where we are.
2007-03-28 04:09:06 · answer #5 · answered by cosmo 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
As it was implied above the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. If the inhabitants of such a planet had sufficient technology, they'd see early mammals instead.
2007-03-28 06:23:51 · answer #6 · answered by winton_holt 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nope....Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. That would mean that you'd have to be about 35 million more light years away to observe them.
Also, it would be incredibly difficult to observe something as small as a planet from a distance that far. Aside from the light source in question (reflected earth light, in this case) being extremely faint, our view would be further hampered by ambient background radiation from nearby sources. (As it stands, we can't really see extra solar planets directly, as the glare from their home stars drowns out their visual signatures).
2007-03-28 04:41:05 · answer #7 · answered by swilliamrex 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yep
well there wasn't any dinosaurs that soon ago ;) but that planet would see us as we were 30,000,000 years ago.
Makes me wonder what we're actually seeing when we look at things far away. It could be completely different in real time.
2007-03-28 03:54:03 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They would have been looking at an era that the dinosaurs has already been gone from.
They would probably see some very interesting things
Mammals were just getting started.
Bingo hadn't been invented,and speech had not been commenced,it would have sort of a blaw time.
2007-03-28 03:42:57 · answer #9 · answered by Billy Butthead 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The dinosaurs were older than 65,000,000 years suppose that a planet inhabited by intelligent beings look at the earth. theoretically, they could see the dinosaurs. But , the amount of light would be so tiny, that it is rather impossible
2007-03-28 03:32:33 · answer #10 · answered by maussy 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋