Is our image being projected into space?

Question

You know how they say objects that we are viewing in space are an older image of the objects current state due to the light travelling such a long distance. What if we viewed the eath from another part of space , and just say we had the technology to highly zoom in on the earth , would the image of dinosaurs still be out there , going through space , and is our image being projected through space?

And if the universe is constantly expanding , it means essentialy all of time is held within it at any one moment., because the imagine is constanly 'travelling'

sorry didnt put a question mark after that last detail

Answer 1

Over interstellar distances, an object's image is seen as many years into its future as its distance from those observing it. That is to say, if astronomers in the 18 Scorpii system, 46 light years away, pointed a radio telescope at the Sun, they may be hearing a broadcast of Kennedy's 1961 speech challenging America to land on the Moon within that decade.

So if you instantly materialized on a world in a galaxy 65 million light years away, and you had a super powerful telescope to view the Earth up close, you would see living dinosaurs.

Answer 2

Yes, but it would be a pretty fuzzy picture.

Consider light to be particles of energy (called photons) that are being emitted (projected, as you say) out into space. Energy dissipates as it radiates out to the square of the distance from the source. That is, if you are 1 mile from a light source and measured the light energy, it would be 4 times less from 2 miles out (2 squared), 9 times less from 3 miles out (3 squared), etc.

Since we're considering this light energy to be in the form of particles, you could imagine that this energy dissipation is due to space between the radiated photons expanding as they radiate away from the source. So, by the time these photons reached a destination after traveling for as long ago as dinosaurs existed - and assuming they weren't absorbed or scattered - they would be very far apart.

So, if these photons were like pixels on a television display, the resolution would be so low that you couldn't really make out what you were looking at. Assuming you could pick up any photons at all from that distance.

Answer 3

The rules for physics apply everywhere in the Cosmos (as far as we know), so yes, the same effect happens to Earth.

But be careful not to get confused. Let me put it on a simple example:

Tonight, if you look at the sky, and you see a star up there, lets say, 10,000 light-years away, then you are looking at the star as it was 10,000 years ago. Why? Because the light took that long to get to your eyes here on Earth.

But also, lets imagine there is a planet in orbit around that same star, and it has life, lets imagine they are humans too to make it simple. Well, if there is a person there tonight also looking up at the stars, and he/she happens to look at our Sun, then he/she will be looking also to the light that took 10,000 years to reach that planet, so in other words, they are looking at earth as it was 10,000 years ago.

If they have a telescope good enough (better than ours as of today) to see not only our sun, but also Earth and zoom in all the way, they will see no cities, no highways, no electricity, no nothing, just humans and animals and the beginning of our civilization.

And of course, if we ever get to build telescopes that can zoom into planets that are orbiting other stars, the same will happen to us. We could look into a planet that is lets say on the other side of our galaxy (lets say about 80,000 light-years), and we will see a planet that maybe has animals, and trees, but not sign of humans or smart civilizations.

But, in reality, that planet today could be technologically advanced just like us, but we won’t see that for another 80,000 yeas until that light from today reaches us.

Is sad, but we are very limited, and unless we discover a faster way to travel and/or communicate, we won’t be able to do a “live” contact with what could be life in other planets that are far away.

Answer 4

I read this science fiction book once that said that if it were possible for us to make some spacecraft travel faster than the speed of light, it could very well take photos from up there showing how the earth was millions of years ago. It'd have to go quite far though. Way further than the sun. But your answer's yes anyway.

Answer 5

I was thinking of this the other day. But you have to get to that certain place fast than the speed of light (teleportation if possible lol). So basically you could look back at the Earth's history depending on how far you go. 50 light yeras = 50 yeras ago and so on..

Answer 6

It all depends on how far. It takes light one year to travel one lightyear, so if it was a couple hundred lightyears away, then yes. But the hubble couldn't do that, even with another thousand years worth of upgrades.

Answer 7

The simple answer is yes, but that'd have to be one terrific telescope...