If you were instantly transported 2000 light years...?

Question

if you were instantly transported 2000 light years away from earth look at a super duper telescope (lol) and saw earth if the telescope was accurate enough could you see the birth of christ? because it takes 2000 years for light to travel that distance you are at.

Answer 1

Definitely yes. But depends on whether Jesus was given birth on an open ground. Lol!

Recently NASA has captured the light of a new galaxy. The light of it is just now reaching earth after billions of years. The next things they would see is the formation of stars and other interesting stuff. So, I could say, the answer for your question is, practically 'Yes!'

By the way, who is driving you that far? Aware of the cost of gas? oooh...

Answer 2

With present technology, if you somehow managed to be 2008 light-years away, you would not be able to clearly resolve any planets optically let alone any details.  Presently we are on the threshold of being able to view planets outside of the solar system, but they will be mere dots next to their parent stars.  Provided you had a telescope that could receive enough light, perhaps the size of the solar system, you might be able to see such detail.

Answer 3

Theoretically, yes, since the light that left the solar system 2000 years ago is only reaching that point now.  Of course, the telescope would have to have x-ray vision since Jesus was born in a horse stable...

Answer 4

NO WAY - Telescopes, no matter how powerfull can only reveal reality. Nice try though.

Answer 5

I guess you could if you could with a telescope that could actually see that accurately.

Answer 6

No because it took place inside, probably in a cave used as a barn.

But you could see the shepherds, in fields as they lay.

The real problem is being instantly transported.  The best we could do under the present laws of physics is have the impression of being instantly transported but it would have taken us 2000 years to get there (as measured in Earth's frame of reference).  So all we'd really see (if we really did have such a powerful telescope) are the people walking away from where our transportation took place.

A better scenario is to imagine a giant mirror built in space by another race (we do not need to know why), and presently floating 1000 light-years away from there.  You happen to have a very powerful telescope.

The mirror just happens to be oriented perfectly for you to see the light that left Earth 2000 years ago, hit the mirror after going outwards for 1000 years, and arrive at your telescope 1000 years after hitting the giant alien mirror.

Then you might see what happened 2000 years ago.  Little Jesus is one of the 8-year-old Palestinian boys, playing behind the house with the neighbors.

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Faster than light travel is not equivalent to time travel.

Time flow follows the time dilation equation (Lorentz transformation) which was known before Einstein's theories of relativity.

t = T* SQRT( 1 - v^2)

t is the time interval as experienced by the traveler.

v is the speed, expressed as a fraction of the speed of light (c)

If a person travels a distance of 99 light years at a speed of .99 c, an observer on Earth would think that the travel time (T) was 100 years.

The traveler would think that the trip only lasted 100*SQRT(1-0.98) = 14.1 years

As the speed gets closer and closer to the speed of light, this number gets closer and closer to zero.  This has led people to believe that if we could go past the speed of light, the number would become negative (traveling back in time)

If a person travels at twice the speed of light, then the time experienced is

t = T*SQRT(1 - 2^2) = T*SQRT(-3)

Is the square root of -3 a negative number?  No, because the square of -1.73205... is +3, not -3.

So, what is the square root of -3?

Smart alecs will say 1.73i (where i is an imaginary number).

Time flow goes off in an imaginary direction.  (I'm using imaginary in its mathematical sense:  a direction that is perpendicular to the time flow between past and future).

That is neither the past nor the future.

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To identify the proper 8-year-old kid, you'd need a resolution close to 1 cm.  The smallest resolvable angle of a telescope is found using Dawes limit.

At a distance of 2000 light years (1.9x10^21 cm)

a width of 1 cm represents an angle of 3x10^-20 deg.

of (roughly) 1x10-16 arcsecond.

Using Dawes limit, this requires a telescope with an aperture of 10^15 m (= 6,666 astronomical units -- I think that the collection of sixes is appropriate for this kind of problem...); that is a little more than one tenth of a light year.

The Alien mirror also has to be of comparable size.

Answer 7

yes. faster than light travel is logically equivalent to time travel. also you could make a round trip journey and arrive at your starting point at an earlier time than you left it. this strikes most people as impossible.

Answer 8

Yes, you can theoretically see the birth of Christ if you could get a telescope powerful enough to see that far.  It is well within the laws of physics.  What is not is travelling that far that fast.  At least not yet anyway.

Answer 9

Well, I would think not. In all the nativity stories I have read he was born at night. The only reason the Earth gives off light is from sunlight bouncing off. To me it doesn't make sense that you would see anything that happened if the sun wasn't shining on it.

Answer 10

yup.... myself i woul actually go for gazillion years ago and see how life actually started onn earth but then again my telescope would probably be the size of a planet itself lol