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Originally Posted by chodadog
That's actually a pretty interesting thought. Assuming you had telescope powerful enough to look that far, and could travel a lightyear in a single hour, or day, or week, then you could watch history as it unfolds and see exactly what happened.
Limited only by a lack of technology. Nice theory. I like it. But isn't this just the theory of relativity?
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Why do you need a powerful telescope? The naked eye will suffice. What do you think we're doing when we look up at the stars? We're seeing the light that was emitted from the past...we're not seeing the current state of the stars. If the star was 10 light years away, then the light emitted took, by definition, 10 years to get here. So we're seeing the star as it was 10 years ago; as far as we know, it might be implodded by now... The thing is we're used to watching the past and relating that with the present, but that's not really the case.
A powerful telescope wouldn't allow you to see further in the past, unless it was moved further away faster than the speed of light, as noted before, or aimed at a reflection of the original light (hint!). Purely from our point of view, the telescope would only allow you to see closer towards the object's present.