They say the deeper(farther) you look into space, the farther back in time you see, thus looking into the past

Question

But, if you look far far away and say you see a star burn out, wouldn't you be looking into the future...because you wouldn't normally know it until later when the last light would naturally reach Earth..like they say..if our sun burned out..we wouldn't know it for 4 minutes..So if we looked far enough to meet the light...it would sort of be the past(the event already happened) and the future because we saw it sooner(with telesopes) than nature would have us see it..........am I crazy

Answer 1

Actually, you are in the future looking back into the past. So no... you would not be looking into the future, you ARE in the future. Looking in a telescope just lets you focus in on those slight traces of light that has already reached us... it doesn't actually move us any closer to the light (or change our perspective of the past/future) it just clarifies it.

Answer 2

Some of these answers are very good. I don't know why somebody is giving them thumbs down. Here's kind of what everybody's talking about. If you listen to a jet that's way up high, you may seen the jet far head of where the sound is coming from. That's because sound travels at a specific speed. When the plane is in a specific spot it generates sound waves. By the time those specific sound waves reach your ears, the jet has moved. So you are, in effect hearing the sound generated by the jet at some time in the past. The universe is VERY large. There is no end to the space it can occupy. A star, or a galaxy, can generate light (kind of like the sound generated by the jet). And, also, kind of like the sound, light travels at a specific speed. Suppose a Galaxy is so far away that it takes the light 1000 years to reach earth. That means that the light we see from the galaxy is as it was 1000 years ago. If we could get half way to the galaxy, we would see light that was generated 500 years earlier. The farther away a source of light is,the longer it takes the light to get to Earth. So, if we find a galaxy so far away it takes 2000 years for the light to get here, we are looking at that galaxy as it was 2000 years ago.. we are kind of looking twice as far back in time as we were when we observed the galaxy that was only 1000 light years away. It's not like time travel or anything like that. It's seeing things the light of which has taken longer to get here The big bang seems to be the popular theory of the creation of the universe. Here's the logic behind the theory... Since everything is moving "outward"... getting farther and farther away from each other, logically at some time in the past everything must have been closer together... and if one goes back further in time, stuff might have been very close together. If one follows that logic, at one time in the distant past everything must have been squished into a very dense package. What caused it to start moving outward? Everything seems to be moving away from everything else. This is the motion of things exploding. Science calls the explosion, the big bang. It must have been very large to blast so much stuff so far. As some have stated, there is also physical evidence, i.e., background radiation that is attributed to the big bang. Don't know if that helps.

Answer 3

You are looking into the past. If you are looking at an object that is 100 light years away then the light that is entering your telescope, or eye, left he star 100 years ago. The Star may no longer exist and we would not know it for 100 years.
And if someone on another planet in a solar system 100,000 light years away (approximate diameter of the Milky Way galaxy) could see the Earth then they would see the Earth as it appeared 100,000 years ago. If the Earth were to explode the light from that destruction would reach that other planet 100,000 years after the cataclysm.
When I see an object in my telescope that is 100,000 light years away I realize that the light I am looking at tonight left that star when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth (just a visualization as dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago).

Answer 4

In a sense, we are looking into the past when we observe starlight from stars a great distance away. This is true because the light we observe either with the naked eye or through the most powerful telescopes was emitted from the star millions of years ago. For example, if we observe a star or supernova explode today, we are observing an event that happened millions of years ago. The light just took that long to arrive on Earth traveling at just over 186,000,000 miles per second.

The difference between seeing the explosion with our unaided eye or through a powerful telescope is that we are seeing a magnified image through the telescope. We aren't seeing it any sooner.

Answer 5

If you wake up in the morning and read about a crime in the newspaper that happened last night, are you seeing into the past? Just because you find out about something doesn't make it "seeing the past", or "seeing the future". It simply IS what it IS, finding out about it when you find out about it.

So, a star just went super nova (exploded). Because it is 200 light years away we'll know about it in 200 years when the light from that event makes it way to earth...so what. Just proves that news doesn't travel as fast as some people think. The aliens that are there watching it happen know about it today. Does that mean they know our future? No, they simply heard the news sooner than we did.

Unfortunately, getting your mind wrapped around whole space-time concept can be overwhelming but that doesn't make you crazy. Tell you what, I'll look at you through my telescope and read your future to see if there is craziness somewhere out there waiting for you.

Answer 6

You are not crazy, it is always good to think about things. When you look at a star you see light that left the star long ago so you definately do not look into the future. You also do not actually look into the past. You see the light now, present. If somebody leaves a town and drives for an hour to reach you you do not see the past when they reach you in another town.You see them now but they left their town in the past but you did not see that, you see them only when they reach you and that is the presence.

The sun's light does not take only four minutes to reach us, it takes a little more than 8 minutes.

Answer 7

Just confused. If you saw a star burn out, the light of the supernova has just reached you, and was emitted during the actual supernova. Due to the sheer distances involved in anything to do with space, even light takes a long time to get anywhere, even at its speed -one light year per year. So is you are watching a supernova 500 light years away, it actually happened 500 years ago. The light always has to reach you, whether it is reaching your naked eye or coming down a telescope, is has still taken 500 years to get here. Telescopes don't reach forward and grab the light early, they just collect more of it that your eye by having a wider lens, and magnify it so that your retina or photographic film or digital photoreceptor can register more detail.

Answer 8

You are not crazy and you are to be congratulated in your attempt to learn more. Whenever you look at anything you see it as it was when light reflected from it. On earth the speed of light is difficult to comprehend, it travels around the Earth 7.5 times per second, but in space it moves at a comparatively, snail's pace. There is no past, only images of it and written records attest to what occurred. There is no future, there is only NOW. As one event ends and the next event begins time advances only to that degree and it is still NOW. When you see the sun you see it as it was 8.5 seconds ago, this is not looking into the past, what you see is an image of the sun as it was 8.5 minutes ago but when you see that image it is Now.

Answer 9

No, you're not crazy. You've simply gotten the idea that telescopes reach out away from Earth to collect the light from stars and galaxies. Not so. No matter how 'powerful' a telescope is, it still has to wait until the light from distant celestial objects arrives here.

ADDENDUM --
After thinking about your question more, in a sense your thinking is correct. Here's why :: the power of any light-gathering telescope can be found by dividing its focal length by the focal length of its eyepiece. Imagine the telescope we're using has a light-gathering power of 100. Now we look at a star that's 500 light years away with that telescope. As we look at the star we've *effectively* moved closer to it. That effective distance can be found by dividing the actual distance (..500 light years..) by the 'scope's power (..100..) So in effect we're seeing the star from a distance of only 5 light years. It's still important to realize that the *actual* light we're working with here has taken 500 years to arrive at our telescope.

Answer 10

you cant see it "sooner " with a telescope. the light still has to reach the telescopes lens to see so you are still looking into the past if you want to say it that way. i like the guy who said the sun cant burn out...it can and it will in a very very very long time:)