It's about the time in the universe.?

Question

Recently a picture surfaced of a super nova that occured over 260 billion years ago. My question is, is there away to capture an image of something happening in the univirse far off as it's happening; and is the reason because the univirse has some gigantic 'time zone' thing preventing this?

I ment million. lol

Answer 1

No, we can not see an event as it is happening at the same time. Just like sound, light also travels and takes time to reach its destination.

Of course, light travel very fast, so anything close to us, like here on Earth, will seem to be instantaneous, even when light actually took a small billionth of a second to reach you.

On big scales, it will take longer. So when we talk about the Universe, it takes millions and even billions of years.

As far as we know, just by looking at light, we have to wait for it to reach us, no other way around. But maybe there is a way to “see” things faster, based on some theories like string theory or m theory, but as it is, we don’t know it yet.


Note to braxton_paul:

We think that the Universe is between 13 to 15 billion years old. But, some studies have suggested that the expansion of the Universe is faster than the speed of light. Not as speed, but since the expansion is exponential, as you measure the speed at which two distant objects separate due to the expansion, that speed would add up more than the speed of light.

The problem is, that nothing can go faster than light (in our space-time as far as we know), so these theories are still just that, theories. But still, based on our space-time math, it can happen. And worse, as distance grows, even if we don’t reach the speed of light, the new space generated by the expansion willl grow faster than the speed of light, making for that light impossible to reach its destination.

We believe that the emptiness we see at the “end” could be not the beginning of time, but just the point where light can not reach us anymore.

Based on that, the Universe could be older, and could be much bigger than what we think.

Answer 2

First of all I think you've typed "billion" where you probably meant to type "million." The universe is 13.7-billion years old, so we can never have any knowledge of anything older than that.

"...is there away to capture an image of something happening in the univirse far off as it's happening...?
No, this can't be done. The reason is that light from any distant object, like your supernova, can only travel towards us at a certain speed (...300-million meters per second...) and because the distance is so great it would take that light 260-million years to get here. Even the sunlight we see 'now' left the sun about 8 minutes ago.

Taking all this a step further it can be said that we never see *anything* right now, no matter how close it is to us. Light always takes some time to get from there to here. In a sense all of us live in the past..!

Answer 3

There is a way to view something as it is happening far away if you are looking in the right place at the right time. No there is no time zone thing that prevents it. I mean it could take a lot of time simply for the light to reach us.

Answer 4

The answer is that it takes light from the event (supernova or whatever ) time to reach us. Light travels at 299792.458 km/s. It cannot travel any faster than that, thus to see it as it is happening you would have to be where it is.

Examples: The light you see from our sun traveling at 299792.458 km/s. takes about 8 minutes to reach earth, thus you do not see the sun until 8 minutes after it has already risen and you see it for 8 minutes after it has already set.

Answer 5

That figure must be wrong, the Universe is generally thought to be only about 13-14 billion years old.

Answer 6

We can only capture light when it gets to us and light travels at a finite speed. We don't see anything real time.