Reflective space anomaly and time observation

[lilbastd]

I've read of instances of dark matter and other anomalies that cause distortion and magnification of light. Is there, could there be, something that reflects light back toward us so that we would observe light of our own galaxy, solar system even, thousands or millions of years in the past?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Welcome to the SDC neighborhood!<br /><br />Theoretically, what you are suggesting is possible.<br />It seems unlikely, though, that enough light/radiation that was reflected right back at us would be strong enough to be detected from here.<br /><br />But who knows what the capabilites of exotic telescope might be a few hundred years from now.<br /><br />We're a very curious species! <br /><br />Meteor Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[robnissen]

Good question. I hadn't thought about this before, but there would be nothing to prevent this from happening. But if something is out there reflecting light back to the Milky Way, we would need much stronger telescopes than we have now to detect it (otherwise we already would have).

 

[vandivx]

<font color="yellow">who knows what the capabilites of exotic telescope might be a few hundred years from now.</font><br /><br />they would likely have to operate on different basis than optical electro-magnetic radiation basis that we focus by means of some lenses/mirrors and catch in CCDs as we do today<br /><br />also the lensing as far as we know and expect is not strong enough to turn the light back by severe bending and direct reflecting is not viable I think in that it would be too scattered light for us to get any usefull information out of it and it would be intermixed with everything around our neighborhood<br /><br />I red once sci-fi story about someone inventing a scope which was some sort of tubus the shape of which bent space in such a way that it would be focusing without any lenses but I am not sure anymore how it went, if it still worked on the principle of elmag radiation rays or what<br /><br />we need to move from elmag radiation to different means like to gravitational radiation based scopes although I have no idea if that would provide sharper and more distant vision ability that would be free from atmospheric effects and focus more sharply at much longer distances and not be defeated by fainting over distance travelling like elmag radiation is (which is why we need huge mirrors to gather the bits of light that do reach us from far off comos<br /><br />I suppose the gravitational waves travel at speed of light but then again it is not sure thing yet untill we do detect them, if they traveled way faster than light radiation then we might overtake light on its way out of our galaxy and perhaps see it as it was before by utilizing reflection off some other object out there but that is really just a pipe dream I believe<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>