gravitational lensing

[anigma46]

Is it poosible since gravety alters lights travel through space that given enough gravitational encounters a stars light could be altered enough to be aimed back at the source. You would look in a telescope and see the sun in our case appearing to be a distant star. With a superpowerful telescope you could possibly see earth and determine it has life,although probably dinosaurs if the light has bee traveling for 100s of millions of years.

 

[nexium]

My guess is gravetational lensing rarely bends the light more than a second of arc, so for 360 degrees; millions of concentric lensings would need to occur in about the same direction = Probability one to a google without intelegent design. Neil

 

[Saiph]

getting close to a bh would do the trick.<br /><br />but you have some practical problems:<br /><br />1) The affected light would be weak and feeble, undetectable basically, for anything other than galaxy sized structures.<br /><br />2) Light is usually only bent small fractions of a degree, so such bending will be extremely rare. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#c0c0c0"><br /></font></p><p align="center"><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">----</font></em></font><font color="#666699">SaiphMOD@gmail.com </font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">-------------------</font></em></font></p><p><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">"This is my Timey Wimey Detector.  Goes "bing" when there's stuff.  It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually.  I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- </font></em></font><font size="1" color="#999999">The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[kmarinas86]

In addition to gravitational lensing, when light is escaping a gravity well, it is redshifted. When light is entering a gravity well, it is blueshifted.<br /><br />http://www.google.com/search?q=gravitational+redshift

 

[Saiph]

of course, the net effect for any light passing through a gravitational well is zero. For the amount it gets blueshifted on the way in, gets redshifted upon leaving the system. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#c0c0c0"><br /></font></p><p align="center"><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">----</font></em></font><font color="#666699">SaiphMOD@gmail.com </font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">-------------------</font></em></font></p><p><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">"This is my Timey Wimey Detector.  Goes "bing" when there's stuff.  It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually.  I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- </font></em></font><font size="1" color="#999999">The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[anigma46]

If you think of each gravitational lens as amirror reflecting the light,over a very long distance one mirror would point back at you,you would need a very powerful eyepiece,granted,but is it possible. A stars light could be reflected around our whole galaxy and show up as a distant yellow sun. More than likely it would have to be a much brighter star than the sun.