CAN WE SEE INTO THE PAST?

WHEN LIGHT SHINES DOWN ON THE EARTH IT REFLECTS ON OBJECTS AND A SMALL AMOUNT HITS OUR EYES WHICH IS THEN PROCESSED INTO AN IMAGE. AND SAY WE WERE ABLE TO SPEED BEYOND LIGHT, ASSUMING IT'S AT ALL POSSIBLE. IF YOU WOULD GO BEYOND A BEAM OF LIGHT THAT WAS REFLECTED ON THE EARTH, SAY TEN YEARS AGO. WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO SEE IMAGES FROM THAT POINT IN TIME?

well thats pretty interesting to think about....
i really have no idea about light beams and speed of light but that sounds like it could happen.......that doesn't mean it will though.

wow maybe we can solve the JFK assassination now... eh

IT WAS HARVEY LEE OSWALD, BUT THATS BESIDES THE POINT.

Light travels at 300,000 km/hour. I don't think your idea is possible. If an object were to travel far far away from earth, and then look back on earth you could see light reflected from earth from the past. However this light would only be white light, it would not form some sort of image of past events. It is incredible to think however that the most distant things that astronomers can see are about 18,000,000,000 light years away! (in comparison our sun is only 8 light minutes away) Its very mind boggling to think that light that we can see from these objects started aprrox 18 billion years ago! its the oldest light fossil that we can see. observation of very distant objects is in a very real sense equivalent to looking backwards in time.

BECAUSE LIGHT TRAVELS IN ALL DIRECTIONS IN IMAGE ON EARTH IN SPACE IS QUICKLY DISTORDED BEYOND ANY RECOGNITION TO THE HUMAN EYE. THE FURTHER THE DISTANCE THE MORE IT WILL DISSIPATE, WHICH THEN GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT IT'S WHITE LIGHT AND NOTHING ELSE. BUT IF YOU WERE TO USE A POWERFUL ENOUGH TELESCOPE TO VIEW CLEARLY A SPECIFIC AREA FROM LIGHT YEARS AWAY YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE AN IMAGE FROM WHATEVER TIME IT'S FROM. FOR EXAMPLE IF SUCH A TELESCOPE WERE AVAILABLE AND WE WERE TO VIEW A PLANET FROM, SAY TEN LIGHT YEARS AWAY AND WE BUMP UP THE MAGNIFICATION TO ZOOM IN ON A WALKING BEING, ASSUMING THERE'S SUCH A THING. AT THE TIME YOU MAKE THIS OBSERVATION THAT BEING WOULD HAVE LONG AGO REACHED IT'S DESTINATION. THUS VIEWING AN IMAGE OF THIS BEINGS PAST.

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IF YOU WERE TO USE A POWERFUL ENOUGH TELESCOPE TO VIEW CLEARLY A SPECIFIC AREA FROM LIGHT YEARS AWAY YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE AN IMAGE FROM WHATEVER TIME IT'S FROM

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what 'image' are you refering to? white light is an image.

White light contains all the colors in the spectrum that we know of
Images are these colors reflected off an object that reach our eye. Black absorbs all; white reflects all....etc...

If find this to be a very interesting theory I have never thought about it before, does this mean if your zoom in on an image you are actually magnifying the light?

I wonder If you could find a way to bend light if you could see into the future..
Time is NOT linear so if you could view light in a diff area of time ...I remember a movie I think it was paycheck were there is some theory about bending light and therefore looking at yourself...can anyone remember

seeing a white light doesn't mean that you can see a coloured image of something in the past such as a tree or a person. there is no scientific logic that you can see the future. refracting light in any way isn't going to allow one to see into the future. light only exists in the present or past, therefore light in the future is impossible to see. even though it is inconceivable its certainly a cool thought though to see in the future

The idea actually is fascinating. Imagine a firework display. In a firework display, just like thunder and lightning...you see the event before you hear it. Now if we wish to be pedantic the event actually occured before we saw it. i.e. it was delayed by miniscule fractions of seconds then we heard it seconds later.

Now the truth is that this event occured. But unless we were unable to travel at infinite speed (which is greater than the speed of light!) we would never catch tat event up. However, one could argue that given sufficient time...if we could rerograde to the past at a speed graeter than the speed of light which is assumed to be nature's (in the physical realm) greatest speed attainable then ultimately some billions of years later we could go so far back as to see the Big bang occur. How far back..well this goes into philosophy and religion..maybe something else to consider?

we couldn't go back into the past to see the big bang occur. It is not possible to see physical events from the past, except light. Anyway as I said before, humans will never be able to travel speeds over 300,000km let alone the ability to build a craft that is capable to travel the speed of light. If you don't believe me, think again because the human species will probably be extinct in a 1000 years, so there is no hope.

Time will tell!

We could be living on Mars and then this earth relative to its own time reference frame will always be about 8mins (?) in the past relative to Mars. But we could go into the past by cheating on clocks; but thas just a technicality!

I AGREE IT IS LIKELY WE WILL NEVER SEE THE BIG BANG OCCUR, SINCE IT HAPPENED,(IF IT HAPPENED) IN ONE SPOT AND EXPANDED OUTWARD AND WE WILL NOT LIKELY EVER CATCH UP WITH THAT LIGHT. BUT I BELIEVE YOU CAN SEE INTO THE PAST AS I EXPLAINED BEFORE.

Trancend- it seems we all agree with you- that we can see the past to some degree. But this amount of past is rather limited. We can only see this past in the form of light. And this form of light doesn't portray images of physical events of the past, but rather simple white light.

If space is infinitely expansive and if we learn to fold space time we can move into any area of the universe so theoretically we could not only catch up but get in front of that light. Which raises an interesting point what is beyond that light ?