Truly seeing back in time-

It's common knowledge that when one looks out into the sky at night
one is seeing the light from stars that were in existence a long time
ago.  With this in mind-

My question is - "If I could send a super-duper camera into space, in
a straight line, faster than the speed of light to a point way out in
space and then stop it, flip it around and point it at earth and have it zoom
in and then transmit the camera images back to earth at a high speed, is
there any way, through any configuration, I could watch the real
history of the earth?"

---

Clarification of Question by wantagoodanswer-ga on 02 Feb 2006 18:57 PST

Clarification - Seeing images of the earth, in history, spinning
around in space just isn't good enough.

If my camera (zoom) was good enough could I see events in history, on
the ground, on earth - For example the execution of Jesus or the
building of the Great Wall of China.

If you could go faster than the speed of light, yes. But shame on you.
You know you are not supposed to go faster than the speed of light.
That's against the law!

Wantagoodanswer --

Try this explanation:
"Guide to Einstein's Relativity"
http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/timewarp.htm

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Hello,

   Actually, you've provided the answer to your question already.
Since it is our understanding that light from distant objects carries
information to us from those objects' times past, then it's reasonable
to say that anyone who is now at some distance from Earth can in
principle be observing Earth as it was in our past.

  So yes, if images of Earth from that distance could be "magically"
relayed instantly, or at least much faster than lightspeed, back to
us, then we would be treated to our own past in real time.

Yup.  In fact, if there happens to be any sentient life in the
planetary system around the star Rho Coronae Borealis (which lies
about 55 light years from the Sun) and they happen to have TV's, they
could tune in to the first season of I Love Lucy.  The photons from
those TV transmissions are just getting there now.

?if images of Earth from that distance could be "magically"
relayed instantly?

While it may be impossible to travel faster than the speed of light it
has been proven that it is not only possible but doable to transmit
?information? faster than the speed of light. Using quantum
entanglement you can have information stored in one cubit ?teleported?
instantly anywhere in the universe. While teleporting matter is a long
way out, teleporting a quantum state was done in 1993. If a
transmitter could be put on the other side of the galaxy and decoder
kept on earth, then yes in information gathered about earth on the
other end of the galaxy could be transmitted instantly to earth. The
information would be from 100k years ago but gathered and received
now, so in effect you would be instantly looking into the past.

For a great read on this and more get the special edition of
Scientific American May, 2003 or you can download it at
http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenameCHAR=item2&methodnameCHAR=resource_getitembrowse&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=6C2FAA19-0087-C3FE-547CDF8E4C786808&ARTICLEID_CHAR=6C36C628-BAC3-3757-25AA53BA69668E8E&sc=I100322

"Using quantum entanglement you can have information stored in one
cubit ?teleported? instantly anywhere in the universe."

   Well, yeah, but that's only if there's entanglement. Not all
particles are entangled.

-Mark Martin

No, no, no! It is impossible to transmit information faster than the
speed of light! That is a basic tenet of relativity and it also
applies in quantum theory. To violate this would allow us to transmit
information into the past (i.e. read the future), violate cause and
effect, etc. etc.

This gets very confusing in quantum theory, since the equations of the
theory allow the "spooky action at a distance" that so bothered
Einstein. Indeed, it is possible to instantaneously collapse the
wavefunction at a distant site. This seems to violate causality, but
does not. Bell's theorem tells us that this CANNOT be used to tranmit
information. Bell's theorem is a direct prediction of quantum theory
and has been demonstrated experimentally. Thus, in spite of this
non-local aspect of quantum theory, Einstein's theory remains valid.

Don't get me started about quantum teleportation. It is very valid and
interesting science, but has nothing whatsoever to do with science
fiction notions of teleportation. This is unabashed hype coming
directly to you from the scientists who invented this misleading
terminology. It is no more teleportation than carrying an object from
place to place or sending a beam of photons from place to place. It
simply says that you can transmit an copy of quantum system, with all
its entanglement from one place to another. You cannot do it faster
than the speed of light and it gets you no closer to being able to
beam-up Captain Kirk.

With regard to the thought that we could see the past by telling
someone on a distant planet to reflect the light back to us,
unfortunately by the time the instructions got to them, the
information about the past would have passed by them. There is nothing
impossible, though, about seeing into the past. One can imagine
gravitational lensing effects that cause light to travel around two
paths, one longer than the other. Light can circle many times near the
event horizon of a black hole and then escape after experiencing a
long delay. Light could travel all the way around a positively curved
universe, etc. The impossible thing is to see into the future, not the
past.

Well, since the speed of light is decreasing, you'd have to ramp up
your speed exponentially to intercept the light that left earth a
really long time ago.

Since when is c getting smaller?

if you have a way to accelerate the telescope up to faster than the
speed of light then sure... even if you just did that, recorded, and
sent it back FTL then you could watch the recording. You could see
jesus on a cross if you knew where to look and if it happened. You
could see that first lightning bolt hit the ocean creating amino
acids...

The problem is that FTL travel is pretty much impossible with our
current model. Check this out... I've cited it once before on GA...

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

How long has c been decreasing?

Since the beginning of time, duh.

Just do some searches and you'll find a lot of controversy about it...

"How long has c been decreasing?

Since the beginning of time, duh.

Just do some searches and you'll find a lot of controversy about it..."

   Just because there's speculation that c has been decreasing doesn't
mean it *has* in fact been getting smaller. There is theory currently
in the works such that c varies as a function of the local energy
density. But there's also strong empirical evidence that it hasn't
been decreasing.

Wantagoodanswer --

This guy says categorically, "No."  "Velocity in time(dt/dt) is
nonsensical. As simple as that."

But the good news is that distance is an illusion and we'll be able to
travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere.
http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm

Remember to save this one to your "Ideas" file.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA