If your eyes were 10 light years apart, would the night sky look 3-dimensional?

Answer 1

Yes, but it would take over 5 years for your brain to process the information and provide the picture.

This is assuming that the image from each eye travels at the speed of light to a central processing point (5 light-years from each eye).

In reality, the photons are transformed into electrical impulses and sent to the brain as nerve impulses (at best, they go 100 metres per second).

5 light-years at 100 m/s would take a little over 3 million years (plus the 1/20 of a second it takes for the brain to make the 3-D image 'available' to your conscious mind).

I would not even begin to calculate the voltage over the entire nervous path from one eye to the brain, nor the quantity of potassium necessary to give even one being 10 light-years worth of nervous system.

Answer 2

What are you on? That question doesn't make any sense. First of all, the night sky looks three dimensional now, its just that the effect is greatly mitigated based on the relative distance of celestial objects. If your eyes were 10 light years closer to the Andromeda Galaxy, it would look more 3-D to you than it does now. Second of all, if your eyes were 10 light years apart, we'll imagine your brain is in the center meaning it's 5 light years from either eye. Assuming, incorrectly, that nerve impulses travel the speed of light there would be a five year delay between what you are seeing and when your brain interprets it. If your brain wasn't equidistant from both eyes there would be a serious problem reconciling what you see because there would be a time delay between the two eyes.

Answer 3

Probably would look blurred. If your eyes were 10 LY apart, it would take 10 years for the images to reach your brain by any means of transmission I can imagine, and the Earth would move so much in that time that your "points of light" wouldn't stay still. That movement is not only an orbit around the sun but also the fact hat the sun is moving and we are being dragged along with it.

You would probably also have a very bad sensation of falling in a great abyss, because your eyes can fool you even when your body "knows" its feet are firmly planted.

Then again, you would probably have a really BAD case of double vision since it would take you TWENTY years to focus on anything - ten years for the image to come in, ten more for the nerve impulses to turn your eyes to point at the same place so you COULD focus and get a 3-D effect.

Answer 4

If our eyes are 10 mm apart, they would see the night sky as 3D. As long as your foveas are still able to align with the image correctly, as long as your eyes are not together, the sky would look 3D.

If your specific question is if it would look more apparently 3D, then yes -- since stars are so far away, we're seeing the light coming at us as parallel rays, which makes it hard to give it dimensionality. If your eyes are farther apart, then for at least some of the stars, you should be able to better resolve their distance from you, thus increasing the 3D-ness of the image.

Answer 5

My eyes are about 3 inches apart and that's enough for the sky to look 3 dimensional.

Try opening up both of your eyes when you look up at the stars.

Answer 6

Probably not. In the first place, it would take me ten years to see anything, and ten years to get the idea of looking at it in the first place.

Answer 7

I don't even want to imagine how distorted my face would look.

Answer 8

Wow.
I don't know, but that is really, really trippy. In a good way.

Answer 9

I think so.

Answer 10

uh, what?