Rogue15 Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 When i look at the stars, am i seeing how they looked centuries or years ago, or at how they are currently? thx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zargon Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 centuries ago I would assume.........? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jem Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 stupid question. Anyways this might give you the answer your seeking: It's possible that the star you are seeing is already dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jabba The Hunt Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 The short answer is the stars you are seeing can be millions of years old, it all depends on how far they are away. The Long answer is that a lot of the starts in the night sky are actually galaxies which are much further away than those stars which you can see in our own galaxy. As light travels at about 299,792,458 m/s as distances between galaxies have to be mesured in light years (i.e. the distance a single ray of light in a vacuum will travel in one year). You can see galaxies and stars are a very long distance apart. This also means that the further the star is away (usually determined by its brightness (which is determined by its size and distance (i cant remember how they determin the size))) the further back in time you are looking, but there is a limit as to how far back you can look, scientists havnt yet got a picture of the big bang (we might do soon) the problem is that the light from the big bang is far too dispersed and not in the visual range so we have difficulty piecing the information together to form a picture of what the big bang looked like. As you can probably guess I'm really interested in this sort of stuff I could go on more, like there was this period in history when there was such a bright star in the sky that you could read at night time (somewhere between 500-1700AD) and that was cause the light from a supernova was reaching us. Sorry about how much there is there and the bad grammer/spelling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K_Kinnison Posted January 7, 2003 Share Posted January 7, 2003 Depending how far away the star is, we end up seeing "light" coming from it based on how far awy it is. It is like being at a track race. and seeing the smoke before seeing the sound. it allready happened, but you havn't herd it yet. Our own star.. the sun the light we see is actaully 8 minutes old. While our nearest neigboring star (Alpha Centaur) is 4.6 light years away. The light that we see form that star is 4.6 light year old. in fact, if you could instantly transport a high power telelscope 100 light years away, we coudl use that telescope to see what was happening on the earth 100 years ago. Seeing the past is easy... seeing the future is hard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue Nine Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Any reason for this scientific inquiry, Fifteen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jabba The Hunt Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Oh btw, They have just discovered that gravity travels at the speed of light, That is to say that if the moon was suddenly pulled from its orbit it would take us 1.6 seconds to realise (the same time it takes light to travel from the earth to the moon). Just thought some of you might be interested. btw. This reduces the possiblity of any scanning technology working faster than the speed of light (and faster than light travel). If gravity cant do it through 11 dimensions, then we have to find away to do it ourselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue15 Posted January 11, 2003 Author Share Posted January 11, 2003 Originally posted by Rogue Nine Any reason for this scientific inquiry, Fifteen? It was just something i thought of before going to bed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyan Farlander Posted January 12, 2003 Share Posted January 12, 2003 Well, obviously you are seeing the stars as they were x number of years ago, assuming that the star is x lightyears away. Assuming also that the speed of light has remained constant and that the distance between that star and us has remained constant. Interestingly enough, they just "confirmed" that the "speed of gravity" is the same as the speed of light. Thus, the gravitational effect we feel because of something is from as we see it now, not as it truly is at this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rogue Nine Posted January 12, 2003 Share Posted January 12, 2003 I'd like to know who "they" are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admiral Odin Posted January 12, 2003 Share Posted January 12, 2003 Do they refer to the voices in my head? I'm surprised no has brought up blackholes yet. Now those are intersesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyan Farlander Posted January 12, 2003 Share Posted January 12, 2003 Originally posted by Rogue Nine I'd like to know who "they" are. Some scientists I can't be bothered looking up the names of. There are articles about it - I'm sure you can find out the names. Of course, Einstein was convinced of this a long time ago, so it's nothing really new. It's just there's some actual data to back up it up now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jabba The Hunt Posted January 12, 2003 Share Posted January 12, 2003 does anyone ever read my posts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flying Beastie Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 Yet another thing I learned first from Star Trek. The Picard Manoeuvre, first employed at the Battle of Maxia. A ferengi Marauder is standing off at a distance of about six light-seconds, firing at the already critically damaged Stargazer (Picard's command). Picard gives the order for a course toward the Marauder at warp speed for a fraction of a second. Since these particular ferengi (being idiots) were only using visible light sensors (apparently they were sure of their victory), the Stargazer appeared in front of them before it appeared to have moved. The Stargazer's warp jump moved it faster than light, so that, from the ferengi's perspective, the ship appeared to be in two places at once. Six seconds later, the ferengi would've seen the Stargazer leaping to warp (the light reflected as the ship moved would've reached them). By then, of course, it was too late, as by that point the ferengi ship had been reduced to "liberated plasma." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admiral Odin Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 Of course we read your post Jabba, we ignore them, but we do read them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zargon Posted January 14, 2003 Share Posted January 14, 2003 Originally posted by Flying Beastie Yet another thing I learned first from Star Trek. The Picard Manoeuvre, first employed at the Battle of Maxia. A ferengi Marauder is standing off at a distance of about six light-seconds, firing at the already critically damaged Stargazer (Picard's command). Picard gives the order for a course toward the Marauder at warp speed for a fraction of a second. Since these particular ferengi (being idiots) were only using visible light sensors (apparently they were sure of their victory), the Stargazer appeared in front of them before it appeared to have moved. The Stargazer's warp jump moved it faster than light, so that, from the ferengi's perspective, the ship appeared to be in two places at once. Six seconds later, the ferengi would've seen the Stargazer leaping to warp (the light reflected as the ship moved would've reached them). By then, of course, it was too late, as by that point the ferengi ship had been reduced to "liberated plasma." I find references to start trek in a 'scientific discussion' funny, I mean come on, its STAR TREK, not babylon 5 or anything Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuicidalXWing Posted January 15, 2003 Share Posted January 15, 2003 I hear they have a computer that can run off of light now, rather than electricity, or something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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