This is a little hard to explain, so bear with me.

What we have to do is build a gigantic telescope in space, far bigger than the Hubble. Then we have to program it where it is always looking at Earth. Then we have to shoot it off away from Earth faster than the speed of light. It will catch up with the light that came from Earth, and in theory will be able to see Earth going back in time. Then record what the telescope sees then have it come back and we will be able to see Earth at its beginnings!

Thoughts?

Hi Parson420, Welcome to BAUT, again.

Again you can't Shoot anything away at FTL.

--Dennis

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Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. -- Niels Bohr --

Ipsa scientia potestas est. ~ Knowledge itself is power.---- Bacon
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Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit.


Hint: this is at heart a scientific forum, and underneath the fooling around there are some diamond-hard minds hanging about, ready to tear you to shreads. -- mike alexander --

I know. But I think it would be awesome. Once/if such speed is achieved, this better be one of the missions

Sorry I don't think it will ever happen. It could be a nice SF book...


--Dennis

__________________
________________________________________
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. -- Niels Bohr --

Ipsa scientia potestas est. ~ Knowledge itself is power.---- Bacon
--------
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit.


Hint: this is at heart a scientific forum, and underneath the fooling around there are some diamond-hard minds hanging about, ready to tear you to shreads. -- mike alexander --

On top of that, the scope would have to go out 4.5 billion light years in order to view light that came from the forming solar system. That's twice as far away as the Andromeda galaxy is, currently. You'd need a 'scope the size of a planet, or bigger, in order to see any details.

So the idea has another strike.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Actually, the Andromeda Galaxy is "only" about 2.5 million light years away. So you'd have to go around 2000 times that distance in order to see the solar system forming - and then you'd probably need a telescope the size of the Andromeda Galaxy in order to get useful resolution at that distance.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

So what's a few orders of magnitude between friends? 4.5 billion LY is over a third of the way to the edge of the visible universe, which I would have realized if my brain hadn't shut down for the weekend.

The original post is an interesting idea, but completely unworkable for many reasons.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

I think it's an awesome idea. Not a person on the planet can say with any form of certainty that some type of FTL will never come to age. First, someone needs to prove that technological development will stutter to a natural grinding halt, because all the universe's secret tidbits of knowledge have already been plucked from the cosmic apple tree.

The question then becomes: is the accumulation of all potential knowledge finite? That's an even harder concept for me to grasp, probably harder still than "what happened before the big bang?"

No, that is not at all necessary. Assuming a causal universe, FTL will never be invented. You can pick any two of relativity, causality, and FTL/time travel, but you can't have all three, and the first is verified and no sign of any violation of the second has ben seen. The issue is completely independent of the finiteness of possible knowledge or technological development.

Reminds me of a SF story, in which a traveler is stranded X light years from Earth, X years after the start of WWII. It takes a while for the rescuers to arrive, so to fill his time, he's listening to radio broadcasts and tracking the progress of the war in real time. When help arrives, he almost insists on being allowed to remain, so he can hear how it turns out, before he comes to his senses.

Smaller scale but similar idea.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Ok fair enough, but what remains unknown transcends our understanding -- beyond fairly wild speculation: alternate dimensions with skewed physics, tachyon speeds, I dont know, all I know is that there are one heck of a lot of unknowns.

I'm not comfortable claiming any certainty, except when those claims are confined to isolated bubbles of experience and understanding.

It might just be easier to find nearby star systems that are in the process of forming planets....

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"In the end the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity."- Fritjof Capra

www.gonzoscience.com

how long would it take to gather enough info to come up with a valid explaination though?

Already done. See 'Battlefield Earth' by LRH. They teleport the telescope but the theory is the same.

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Dog

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

How about a SF murder mystery? Instead of recreating the crime scene, just rewind time to see the crime as it is happening. Only problem is time dilation. The person looking at the rewound time from outer space would age much slower than the culprit on Earth. We're talking beyond infinite aging and into a complex valued aging. That shouldn't be too big of a problem though. Since we already scrapped part of relativity to go FTL, might as well scrap the time dilation aspects of SR as well. Just declare that Newton was right after all, don't mention the mountain of evidence to the contrary (that's why it's called Science Fiction instead of Science Fact) and get on with writing the book.

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Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

Oh, pshaw! everyone knows you only need to go about 6,013 light-years out.

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