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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giant mirror
Then come back to earth and look into the mirror. What would I see?
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giant mirror
At current attainable speeds you would be long dead by the time you got there with your mirror. assuming then that some alien over there had a huge mirror and pointed it our way, then one assumes after 20 years you would see a reflection of our system as it was around 20 years before. However he would have had to have put the mirror there ten years before you sent this message for the reflection to he there now, and in any case unless this alien had a mirror as big as the solar system, you would not be able to see very much detail! I'm sure the alien has better things to do with his or her time though, like perhaps avoiding daft questions. grin. Brian -- From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active "Bigchunk83" wrote in message ... Then come back to earth and look into the mirror. What would I see? -- Bigchunk83 |
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Great answer, thanks, I am amused by this question, and thought I would share it.
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giant mirror
After serious thinking Brian Gaff wrote :
I'm sure the alien has better things to do with his or her time though, like perhaps avoiding daft questions. Ah, but is this so very different from some the thought experiments of Einstein or Schroedinger? (although the latter wasn't much into astronomy, from what I've seen) /dps -- Who, me? And what lacuna? |
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giant mirror
But I'd imagine apart from a very slight red shift the answer would be as I
said in any case. The alien pun was semi serious. The idea of who actually wants to talk to other beings and whether to transmit or not is an interesting one. I know all about the fact that its been done once, and that the radio from here has spread to to a certain distance, but given the huge electromagnetic output in the universe which is not that well tuned, it would take a very lucky alien to actually detect it, and then what? Even Quantum entanglement needs to have the atom sent somewhere to work I think. Reading the recent stuff on this it seems that this has its drawbacks! I had a horrible dream the other night where all this 'stuff' expanding the universe was also being shoved inside atoms and sub atomic particles and suddenly, it overcame the forces there and we all ceased to exist! grin. Brian -- -- From the sofa of Brian Gaff - Blind user, so no pictures please! "Snidely" wrote in message news:mn.828f7dc9118a103d.127094@snitoo... After serious thinking Brian Gaff wrote : I'm sure the alien has better things to do with his or her time though, like perhaps avoiding daft questions. Ah, but is this so very different from some the thought experiments of Einstein or Schroedinger? (although the latter wasn't much into astronomy, from what I've seen) /dps -- Who, me? And what lacuna? |
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giantmirror
On 9/15/2012 10:59 PM, Bigchunk83 wrote:
Then come back to earth and look into the mirror. What would I see? If you could make the trips instantaneously, you'd see precisely what was happening at the moment you left to head back, 10 years previously. I always though the idea of interstellar travel would be very interesting if you could use a 'teleporter' like device. Sure you have to wait the centuries until the "transceiver" arrives at its distant destination, but once activated, you'd step into the teleporter on Earth and presto! you arrive at your destination at what seems to you to be instantaneously because your "teleporter signal" propagated through space at the speed of light. Of course, for a destination 10 light years away, at the time of your arrival 10 years would have passed on Earth. But any signal sent along with you would also take the same amount of time to traverse the distance so as far as you know nothing transpired "during" the trip. BUT, on your way back, step back into the teleporter and presto! you arrive now 20 years into Earth's future. A very different place than the one you left behind! A two-way trip through space becomes a 1-way trip through time. Dave |
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giantmirror
On 10/11/2012 11:49 AM, David Spain wrote:
On 9/15/2012 10:59 PM, Bigchunk83 wrote: Then come back to earth and look into the mirror. What would I see? If you could make the trips instantaneously, you'd see precisely what was happening at the moment you left to head back, 10 years previously. I always though the idea of interstellar travel would be very interesting if you could use a 'teleporter' like device. Sure you have to wait the centuries until the "transceiver" arrives at its distant destination, but once activated, you'd step into the teleporter on Earth and presto! you arrive at your destination at what seems to you to be instantaneously because your "teleporter signal" propagated through space at the speed of light. Here is one way you could 'postulate' how such a system would work. And it sort of dovetails nicely with the mirror analogy. After centuries of elapsed time, the 'home' portal begins to receive the signal back from the "transceiver". What you see is a projection of the 'remote' portal 10 years in the past. It might appear to be a picture of a room similar or nearly identical in appearance to the 'home' portal. A traveler would start the journey by stepping into the 'transmitter' which might mean simply walking towards the projected room at the 'remote'. For those observing from the base station our traveler would 'dissolve' during his 'walk' and then reappear in the projected room 10 years later w/o even so much as a 5 o'clock shadow! A person at the 'receiving' end would not see anything unusual at all!! Just a person walking from one room into another! Dave |
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If I travel to a star 10 light years away and install a giantmirror
On 10/21/2012 1:59 AM, David Spain wrote:
For those observing from the base station our traveler would 'dissolve' during his 'walk' and then reappear in the projected room 10 years later w/o even so much as a 5 o'clock shadow! A person at the 'receiving' end would not see I mean, 20 years later.... (errrgh, can't add this late at night! 10 years out + 10 years for 'projected' signal to come back = 20 years) anything unusual at all!! Just a person walking from one room into another! Dave Dave |
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