Could we see an old version of Earth if we look far enough into space ?

Question

As light bends with gravity and it is estimated that the Universe is curved if we had the ability to look into deep Space, could we see the Earth as it was billions of years ago ? In theory, could it be possible that one of the 'Stars' we can see could be our very own solar system as it was billions of years ago ?

In fact, if you could look closer and closer to the source of light from space would you eventually be looking at Earth in present time ?

Answer 1

No I personally don't believe that. I do however though think that if we looked farther into space we would see hundreads of thousands of new galaxys and planets. Fascinating life forms and so on. If you think about it the milky way galaxy is just 1 of million. As for humans we are just one living organism on earth. Compared to millions of galaxys we are merely the size of a pin head.  

Answer 2

i believe not..and i;ve thought of this before too..but i dont think so because the earth doesnt have its own light.. and ur question is a little Confusing,..i thinkn u should explain urself a little bit more..AND light does bend with gravity.. its been proven! ..[for the person before me]

Answer 3

If the light not weak.

But the light are weaken, so we are very hard to find this light.

Maybe we can say we can not.

Answer 4

i don't think we could (unless we could see back in time)

but we would see something similar to the earth.

i think this is just got to do with probability thing

like in the universe with infinte number of planets and stars there must be some planet just like earth was long ago.

well as light can bend i think u will see the part of universe around a certain object but i don't think it is actually curved.

so theroratically it could be possible

like if a light is curved, the light form the ( say) planet could curve all the way back to the same planet due to the gravity of the star it is revolveing

ahhh i don't think i understand the last part very well .

anyway i don't think that is possible with the earth coz there is no star ( any massive body ) with large enough gravity to do it

even if there was, we couldn't have seen the earth from the earth coz the light maynot do a 360 turn

Answer 5

Collin38: Light doesn't bend with gravity? What about Gravitational lensing, or black holes? I think you'll find that light does bend with gravity, as space becomes curved.

To answer the question, no, we could not see an old version of Earth, for several reasons:

1. The expansion of the Universe is moving at the speed of light, so light from our own past can never make the trip around fast enough for us to see it.

2. To be able to see light wrapped around the Universe, we would need to be able to see literally around the Big Bang. 300,000 years after the bang, the Universe was finally cool enough for photons to travel freely. Before that, the radiation was strong enough to prevent them. Which means light could not exist. This first movement of light is today seen as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (the light has redshifted because of the doppler effect, and is no longer visible to our eyes).

3. Even if all that were possible to overcome, the Sun and certainly the the Earth would be far too small to see. The farthest we can see back is close to the estimated age of the Universe, around 13.7 billion years. All we can make out are what appear to be 'proto-galaxies' in the process of forming. Resolving individual stars at even this distance is currently impossible (except for quasars, which are star-sized, but brighter than galaxies). In theory, the image of our sun in the past would be nearly double the distance from our viewing perspective.

Answer 6

I'd never thought about it like that...

but that is a very good theory, something to think about..

Answer 7

yeah I suppose, but we would need to be able to travel faster then light through several billion, million, thousand light years, to see the earth back then. And we probably wouldn't see much, I mean we haven't actually been able to even see another planet outside our solar system yet. We only assume they are there based on evidence of gravitational forces and the model of our own solar system. Now if we could see a reflection of our solar system off some solar gasses somewhere and actually have telescopes that could make heads or tails of it, we might see our solar system billions of years ago.

Of course we can't be certain of the time either because it has already been proven and done in one study that light can be slowed and sped up.

Answer 8

I'm pretty sure that light doesn't bend with gravity (photons have no mass)

Answer 9

Believe or not u would see it and u would see dinosaurs too(if u were looking w/ a super dooper magnifying glass) Its the light traveling through space.