Professor's time travel idea fires up the imagination

Boston Globe ^ | 4/5/2002 | David Abel

[Scully]

Political intrigue, crime, and deviant sex are mandatory requirements if you want it to ever get published. Hillary delivers on all accounts.

Thank you, but I would prefer NOT to know what Hillary does with all those pimentos. I don't think I could ever look another martini in the col...er...face.

[longshadow]

but I would prefer NOT to know what Hillary does with all those pimentos.

Shame on you. This is family forum! How dare you mention pimentos?

[PeaceBeWithYou]

I always thought that if there was a distant planet of a distant star (say 10,000 light-years away), and this planet had a highly reflective surface, and we had a really super telescope, we could see the reflection of the earth as it was 20,000 years ago.

I hate to be the "fly in your soup" so to speak, but viewing the light of a reflected image would show you the present, because it took that light 20,000 years to make the round trip. A telescope only allows us to look into the past when viewing light directly from or close to the source of that light. Now, if you could find a way to accelerate the reflected light, then your concept is feasible.

I've been checking daily for the new images to start pouring in when the new optics in the Hubble get cranked up, there is no telling what we will see and learn from that, and it should be any day now.

[Lancey Howard]

I hate to be the "fly in your soup" so to speak, but viewing the light of a reflected image would show you the present, because it took that light 20,000 years to make the round trip.

No. Either I wasn't clear or your thinking is flawed.
It would take 1,000 years for the light from earth to reach the reflective surface on a distant planet (which is 1,000 light-years away). It would then take that same light 1,000 years to be "reflected" back to earth - - and this is obviously the same light which would then enter the lens of the telescope. Making the image (of long-ago earth) presented by that light 2,000 years old. Hence, it would be a "picture" of earth as it was 2,000 years ago.
No "fly in the soup" here.

Regards,
LH

[Lancey Howard]

By the way, it's all pretty speculative anyway, since the disbursement of photons (and the effects of gravitational yanks from various celestial bodies) over that distance would likely render any image pretty fuzzy anyway, to say the least.

But thinking is fun, and ladies, it does not give you wrinkles.

[pepsionice]

I would go back to the early 70s and arrange to have Bill Clinton arrested for smoking grass, and then arrested again for rape. His political career would never have occurred and little Bill would just be a third rate lawyer in Conway, drinking whisky straight up, and married to some trailer trash gal. Hillery would have gone onto marry some other flaming fool and still been first lady, just not Ms. Clinton....and she might have even married a Republican at that!

[ihatemyalarmclock]

and to tell him to buy Microsoft at $5.

Um, given the current age (57) of our intrepid scientist, computers filled entire buildings when he was 10, and Bill Gates was not yet born.

Not meaning to be a "downer," Xerox was an excellent buy in the early days. Poor-houses are full of people who said: "why pay all that money for those big machines when you've got carbon-paper?"

[CharlieDarwin]

There would be government laws to control time travel, he believes.

There already is one - the post office - it's where your missing mail goes.

[mv1]

Having seen the Dreamworks "Time Machine" I have my doubts now about Time travel

[dread78645]

Some say it is very boring.

"Baby, I've looked into it. There's a gas shortage and a flock of seagulls. That's about it."