Can we literally see into the Earth's past? That is, can we see events
that occurred seconds ago or even millions of years ago? My six year
old son wants to know.

Some of the comments here may be of interest:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=440383

Before you confuse your young son with the discussion on the other
question, the simple answer is "no".
If we could, it would ruin the business of books on history, religion,
evolution, etc.

Myo has the right of it. There is no way to know. There are two
leading theories. One that it is very old and one that it is very
young. The old one makes the earth 4.5 billion or so. I have read as
young as it could possibly be is 5900 years or so. Great minds have
aligned on either side of these theories and systematically try to
discredit the other guys theory while mostly neglecting to shore up
thier own theory.

  One of the few difference is the intelligent men who support the old
earth theory are sometimes offered high paying job at top end schools.
While the intelligent men in support of the young earth theory are
mocked, rejected, labeled religious and mostly discounted.

I could site examples of strange occurances in geology like hammers
found with petrified handles in cretaceous rock, inlaid carvings on
petrified wood, An iron nail was found in a Cretaceous block from the
Mesozoic era, the Glen rose tracks in stone where dinosaurs walked
beside human feet, A paving tile was found in a '25 million-year-old'
Miocene formation in Plauteau City, Colorado in 1936, jewelry
recovered from inside coal, and Two skeletons were found in Cretaceous
rock (supposedly dated at 100 million years) in Moab, Utah, about 15
feet below the surface.

Both skeletons were definitely human and ancient. They had been
undisturbed till they were found. When tested for age, they were only
a few thousand years old.

All impossible occurances in the 4.5 billion year plan.

If you want airtight proof, I have none to give you

=]

I wonder which side of the round/flat controversy tedrick comes down
on.  You know, the shape of the earth.  Great minds have aligned on
either side of this one too.  I believe the flat theory myself.  I
just don't get how all them pesky satellites orbit around a flat
planet.

obvisouly they use magic

Na, there are a bunch of hooks up there.  They discovered them with
the Palomar telescope.  With Rracecarr's flat earth, the satellites
don't have to orbit.  The trick is shoot them up so that they hang on
the right one.
So why do the sun and moon and stars rise and set?  I'll figure out an
answer for that when someone asks.  ;-)

There is no controversy among scientists. It is not hard to understand
the measurement techniques and they are conclusive. The oldest rocks
on the earth are about 4 billion years old. It's simple, measure the
half life of the radioactive isotopes, measure the ratio of decay
products in the rocks. Other evidence shows that the earth and solar
system are a bit older than this, approximately 4.5 billion years.
Recent observations of the anisotropy of the black body radiation have
been able to date the age of the universe remarkably precisely to
about 13.5 billion years. The measurement technique for this is MUCH
more difficult to understand and perhaps open to some controversy, but
very consistent with other knowledge such as the well established age
of the earth.

This is not to say that someone who believes that the earth is only a
few thousand years old is crazy or stupid. I'm just saying there is no
controversy among scientists. Oh sure, there are undoubtedly a few
scientists who would contest this, but the percentage is small enough
to discount.

So, if you are someone who looks for rational, scientific explanations
of the world and believe in science, no controversy. If you pefer to
ignore science, fine, I respect your belief system, but you are
missing out on an appreciation for what I consider to be the greatest
achievement of mankind, the scientific understanding of what were once
great mysteries.

One man's opinion.

Yes, it is possible for someone to see what was happening in earth
like 500 years ago. Imagine a planet that is 500 light years away,
there lives an advanced civilization that has the technology to build
super telescopes with HUGE image definition or the ability to restore
a image transmited from light years distance.
So, because the light reflected from the surface of our planet travels
at the speed of light, this civilization, is in fact, in this moment
watching earth 500 years ago.
For us it is impossible to see, because even a thing that happened 1
second ago you need to be 299 792 458 m away to see it in the future
(imagine it like a 1 second future).
Recent developments in physics may represent major advances in this
field since there is the possibility that time has more than 1
dimension, and not just as we think of it. In a simple way maybe time
can be morphed, but no certains here.
Hope it helps you.

Comment by lebre-ga leads to an interesting possibility, assumung that 

1. our telescope technology is very advanced 
2a. aliens from very far away planet have huge mirrors pointed at us -or- 
2b. some space object is capable of reflecting light

than in it is possible to look at the earths reflection and look into
earths past. How deep the past is depends on how far away the
reflecting object lies.

This idea may seem impractical but could be a possibility and is sure interesting.

It all depends by what you mean by "See into the past".  If you are
referring to actual events, the simple answer is no.  We would have to
be at a point where the light from the event arrives to our eyes.  To
see an event that happened a while ago we would have to be able to
travel faster than light & place outselves in the path of the ligh
from the event.  We can't travel anywhere near the spead of light. 
However, if we shine a light at a reflector on the moon & see the
reflection, we are actually seeing an event that happened a few
seconds in the past.  But I don't think this is what your six year old
meant.

The planet is round. It is not ancient. Try to have some professionalism.
All present things agree with the theory of creation. Carbon dating
was faulty when they designed it for those in support of the theory of
evolution. Darwin himself (quoted below) did not fully understand why
the species in between are nonexistant. You cannot theory up something
without the pieces and that is just what evolution always has been.

When will you get life to crawl out of a jar?
When will you find the missing links between every single phyla every recorded?
When will you suffeciently explain abiogenesis?
When will you explain how a dinosaurs could have walked aside men?
(Glen Rose Tracks)
When will you explain man made objects recovered from inside coal?
There are are a grand host of things that have not even been explained
somewhat rationally. As such I am forced, having reason of my own, to
side with the more simple theory that fits the current surroundings
and requires far less faith on my part.
Creation.

As such I am not alone in my confusion over how evolution came into
such popularity.

"One of the determining forces of scientism was a fantastic accidental
imagination which could explain every irregularity in the solar system
without explanation, leap the gaps in the atomic series without
evidence [a gap required by the Big Bang theory], postulate the
discovery of fossils which have never been discovered, and prophesy
the success of breeding experiments which have never succeeded. Of
this kind of science it might truly be said that it was `knowledge
falsely so called.' "?*David C.C. Watson, The Great Brain Robbery
(1976).

"The particular truth is simply that we have no reliable evidence as
to the evolutionary sequence . . One can find qualified professional
arguments for any group being the descendant of almost any other."?J.
Bonner, "Book Review," American Scientist, 49:1961, p. 240.

"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed.
Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not
all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we
see them, well-defined species?"?*Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch,
Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 139.


"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of
creation."?*Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe
(1981), p. 19.


"In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost
all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to `bend' their
observations to fit in with it."?*H. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at
Evolution," Physics Bulletin, 31 (1980), p. 138.

"Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a
simple, understood and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly
unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the
weaknesses and extrapolations that the theoreticians put forward or
lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious,
but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism,
purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies
and falsity of their beliefs."?*Pierre-Paul de Grasse, Evolution of
Living Organisms (1977), p. 8.

"The creation account in Genesis and the theory of evolution could not
be reconciled. One must be right and the other wrong. The story of the
fossils agreed with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did
not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the
most primitive creatures to developed forms, but rather in the oldest
rocks developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there
was a complete absence of intermediate fossils."?*D.B. Gower,
"Scientist Rejects Evolution," Kentish Times, England, December 11,
1975, p. 4 [biochemist].

Oh, I get it now.  Hundreds of years of scientific discoveries,
verifiable experiments, and technological advances enabled by science
are all mistakes, coincidences, and sheer luck.  Scientists are all
idiots.  It makes much more sense to ignore all of that and just read
a story someone once wrote down about an apple and a snake.

Oh yeah. This is the part where I am supposed to try and convince you
that I am right and you are wrong. I am not going for it. But I will
say that if your afterlife ends up being a might warmer than you had
previously imagined. Do not come crying to me.

I will be happy to completely ignore you (that includes refraining
from crying to you) if you will just take your religious crap over to
the Religion category, and keep it out of the discussions of
scientific questions.

This is an interesting question, the answer is simply yes to an
extent. After the big bang occured all matter expanded from a central
point. If you were to have a telescope strong enough you would because
of how light travels be able to see in to the past. Let me clarify.
Light travels at a constant speed, the time it takes the light from
the edge of the universe to reach your telescope is so long, the light
from the first seconds of the universe is what your seeing. For
example, the light you are seeing from the sun currently is the light
created eight seconds ago. Apply this principle to something further
away and the light you see (which in turn becomes the image you view
from the telescope) is extremely outdated. What you are seeing has
long since changed. As for looking back on Earths History like past
events no I do not believe that is possible. I hope that helps. Im a
fresh man in highschool but I know my Science.

Light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to get to the earth.

using einstein`s theory of relativity,some people are trying to make a
machine called time machine(it can see things of the past only if the
machine was on at that time).upto my knowledge of relativity, a time
machine based on such principle cannot be possible
          u know theory of relativity is full of these types of answers
all of them cannobe provided here
      ask ur son to become a relatvist
        i think he can be better than those of now
                              thx

"I will be happy to completely ignore you (that includes refraining
from crying to you) if you will just take your religious crap over to
the Religion category, and keep it out of the discussions of
scientific questions." - rracecarr-ga


      For most sciences I would say that you are correct. Religion has
no place in physics, aerospace design or propulsion tech. Its uses in
the scientific community are limited to a select few fields.
Archaeology for example uses it a good amount as most religious record
are old and mostly accurate. Some have yet to be proved inaccurate.
When people say that this is whatever million or that is whatever
billion years old usually it is because someone else has told them it
was so. Not knowing the science of how we date particular samples I
was inclined to believe them. Then I began to study the science of how
thing are dated. This is important to the OP question because if you
cannot look into the past; the next best thing is to have a good
timeline of what has occurred in history.

The premire and leading way things are dated is radiocarbon dating.
Carbon 14 (C-14) dating was considered to be a tremendous breakthrough
in science when Willard Libby devised it in 1946. That is measuring
the amount of C-14 in a particular object to determine its age. This
can be problematic at best for if conditions change so does the rate
of C-14 decay. The earths magnetic field has a large bearing on the
rate of decay as well. There are many problems with carbon dating I
will list a few for those of you who have large brains.

1 - No rock in the world is a closed system. 

2 - Decay rates could have been different in the past. Under varying
conditions, we have already found evidence of change in the
present?and Joly found changes in the past

3 - Daughter products could easily have been present in the beginning.
An original intermingling of such products would nullify present
attempts to date by daughter products

4 - Unknown changes in our past environment could ruin the narrowly
drawn assumptions. There is no way of knowing exactly what each local
past environment was like

5 - High energy particles, nearby radioactive minerals or contact with
certain chemicals could earlier have significantly altered decay rates

6 - Earlier changes in the atmosphere would have greatly affected
decay rates. No one knows whether the earlier atmosphere was
identically like our present one

7 - The decay clocks did not have to start at the beginning of their
chains. Daughter products could have been present in the beginning

8 - Lead could originally have been mixed in with the uranium or
thorium. It is only an assumption that all the lead could only be an
end-product

9 - Common Lead 9 (PB-209) could have been mixed in. This would also
seriously affect the dating

10 - Leaching could easily have occurred in past time. Passing
solutions could have carried away portions of daughter products

11 - Comparisons of lead ratios could be inaccurately made. This could
damage test results in five ways

12 - Any earlier change in the Van Allen belt would have decidedly
affected decay rates. ?And we have only known of this high-atmospheric
belt since 1959

13 - Free neutrons could be captured from neighboring lead 206. Most
radiogenic lead on earth could have been produced by neutron capture

14 - If the earth had originally been molten, this would have resulted
in wide variations of rock settings. Intense heat damages radiodating
clock settings

15 - Uranium dates, thorium dates, and all the other dating methods
always disagree with one another. This itself is strong evidence of
the unreliability of the various methods

16 - Some of the daughter products (such as argon) are gases which
easily migrate out of the rocks.

As the problems abound with carbon dating there are still some those
that cling to it as it produces exteremely dated object sometimes
above (in the strata) younger objects.

 Some samples of coal, oil, and natural gas, all supposedly many
millions of years old have radiocarbon ages of less than 50,000 years.
Deep ocean deposits supposed to contain remains of most primitive life
forms are dated within 40,000 years.

   To further compound the carbon dating problems muscle tissue from
beneath the scalp of a mummified musk ox found in frozen muck at
Fairbanks Creek, Alaska, has a radiocarbon age of 24,000, while the
radiocarbon age of hair from a hind limb of the carcass is 17,200. A
life span exceeding 7,000 years for a specimen of this species is
doubtful.

To tie it all up radiocarbon dating cannot be relied upon with any
hint of accuracy. Freshly slain animals have dated back as far as 1300
years ago.

There are also mentionable finds in archaeology that point to an
incredibly young planet. Let me link one for you.

http://home.texoma.net/~alphom1/hammr.htm

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/taylor-all-14.jpg


The first link if of a fossilized hammer in cretaceous rock. It has a
petrified handle. These are odd occurances is not that the handle is
petrified. Things can petrified or fossillize in less than a century
under perfect conditions (google: petrified hat found in mine). The
funny thing is that it is encased in rock. The cretaceous period
started '150 million years and ended 75 million years ago'

So we found a 75 million year old hammer. Unless the dinosaurs could
forge hammers I doubt it. So people created it 75 million years ago.
Not likely. If humans had been around that long, forging iron, they
would have managed to start recorded history as well. Thats just one
hammer.

Next the tracks and how I tie these two 'errors in space time'
together. If you look at the picture you will see two set of tracks.
One looking a lot like human footprints (with appropriate running
gait) and a set of 3 toes dinosaur footprints. It is still unknown who
was chasing who. The important thing is that dinosaurs and mankind
coexisted and this is proof of such existence. There is a sea of
highly suppressed archaeological finds that a little research can
uncover. These finds directly contradict the theory of the radiocarbon
dating theorists that would have us evolving from primates.

This is not about religion - it is more about archaeology. The history
of our species. The things you can find. Pick up and measure reliably.
If your measuring tool does not agree with itself or it does not agree
with logic, then you cannot use it.

I would urge anyone who cares to know to look for yourself and not to
take the word of others. Including me. It is a vast planet and a lot
of things can be learned from it. Indeed the truth can be gleaned from
its very surface.

Tedrick said: "...usually it is because someone else has told them it
was so..." . He on the other hand has studied the science and come to
some conclusions. He makes 16 claims, supposedly about carbon dating,
most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with carbon dating.  Guess
what, his claims repeat verbatim the contents of this web site:

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/06dat6.htm

To the credit of that web site, they at least reference their source
and don't claim that these are statements about carbon dating.

Now I only ask one question. How in the world could changes in the
atmosphere, the passage of time, or the Van Allen radiation belt (for
heaven's sake) change the decay rate of atomic nuclei?

I respect your belief system, but please don't claim you understand
science and attempt to use scientific arguments to support your faith.
Faith is faith, you cannot prove it with science.

Subject: Re: Science - Physics
From: rracecarr-ga on 28 Feb 2006 17:58 PST 	 

Light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to get to the earth.

My mistake sorry, but my point is still valid.

Just explain that as distance is one of the improtant factor TIME is
one more important factor.... explain with and example that the
sunlight takes about 8min to reach earth and in similar way if we see
at a planet at very distant space wont be seeing the present but the
past what happened the before the time taken by the light to reach....
I hope this will help u
Carzy

Yes I used information on the web. Guilty. I will continue to. Thanks.
To keep the trend going I though I would at least try to engage the
question about atomic the decay rates of atomic nuclei and its
realtion to the magnetism of our little planet.

Let us start with what everyone already knows. Magnetic field decay
The earth's magnetic field strength was measured by Carl Friedrich
Gauss in 1835 and has been repeatedly measured since then, showing an
exponential decay with a half-life of about 1400 years. This could
also be stated as a relative decay of about 10% to 15% over the last
150 years. (wiki)

Now the ancient earth people explain this by 'deducing' that the field
must flip poles every however many million years. This cannot be
proved but it saves them from the alternative.

That the field has always been decaying. Since it was first put in
place by whatever or whomever formed it.

If this is the case, and I emphasize the IF, then the magnetic field
in the past was much stronger than it is now. Simple. Right now it is
between .3 and .6 gauss in strength.

How much stronger? Well a 10% weakening every 150 years. Inverted is a
10% increase every 150 years into the past. Say a 100% increase every
1500 years in the past. Yes I am assuming it is linear - but for the
past 150 years it has been.

So increasing by .3 to .6 gauss every 1500 years does not sound too
bad. It does however effect atoms a small amount. Why? Atom are held
together magnetics. Logic dictates that they are effected but external
magnetism. A halving of the magnetic field every 1500 years effects
atomic decay. Including that of carbon isotopes.

They knew this then and they drew in the poles shifting deduction to
circumvent anyone coming across the discrepancy.

That is the best I can do to answer your question. 

Now how do you explain the dinosaur with people fossilized footprints? 

As well as the rock encased hammer?

I question the validity of tedrick's sources, both are obviously
biased, being a Christian school and a website called "www.bible.ca".

answer is "no".scientist need to develop a time machine so we can go back in time

dear tedrick this may interest you,

regarding this qoute:
"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed.
Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not
all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we
see them, well-defined species?"?*Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch,
Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 139.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

"Punctuated equilibrium (or punctuated equilibria) is a theory in
evolutionary biology which states that most sexually reproducing
species will show little to no evolutionary change throughout their
history. When evolution occurs it happens sporadically (by splitting)
and occurs relatively quickly compared to the species' full duration
on earth. Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted against the
theory of phyletic gradualism, which hypothesizes that most evolution
occurs uniformly and by the steady gradual transformation of whole
lineages (anagenesis). Punctuated equilibrium is the currently favored
theory for the fluctuating patterns of evolution observed in the
fossil record."

also please keep in mind that there are multiple dating methods used
as checks against each other before any date can be considered
accurate. It would require a very long string of coincidences for each
of these to render similar results all over the earth as consistently
as they do if the methods were as unreliable as you seem to think.
That is why i trust them.

The examples you gave of things that evolution cannot explain are in
fact interesting exceptions to the rule, but even if you had 1000 such
examples it should not change the mind of a rational person who
beleives something due to hundreds of thousands, possibly even
millions of examples. Instead an explanation that is consisten with
the well supported theory should be sought out. (see punctuated
equilibrium above)

The final thing I think you should keep in mind is how rarely
fossilization actually occurs and just because it occurs does not mean
someone who will recognize it will find it. "Gaps" in the fossil
record are to be expected.

I hope this explained the opposing point of view to you, because it
didnt seem like anyone else was able to.