What if we found a reflective surface in space? Follow me on this one – we could see the past.
When you look up at the night sky, you do not see stars as they are now. You are literally looking into the past becuase you are seeing the light that was emitted from the star long ago, it took time to get to your eye. So, if you are looking at our closest star other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away, you are seeing what it looked like 4.2 years ago. It took the light which you see 4.2 years to get from the star to you.
Everyday we receive new images of objects in space from our telescopes. What if we one of those pictures comes back with a reflection of Earth? If there is something out there that is reflective and it is angled so that the light bounces straight back to Earth we could literally see the past.
If it is 5,000 light years away, we would see what the Earth looked like 10,000 years ago. 5,000 for the light from earth to get to the mirror and 5,000 more for the light to make it back to Earth. If we kept watching it, we would literally watch the past.
Ok, that is all ‘what if’. Admittedly the odds of finding a perfectly reflective object angled exactly right are astronomical, of course so are the possibilities in the massive abyss of space. Here is where the rubber meets the road. We could shoot a mirror into space. Just put it on a path and let it go with no objective to stop or come back. Due to the rotation of the Earth and its circumnavigation of the Sun we would only get one image per year, when we are in the exact same place. It would be like watching a time laps of the history of the Earth in reverse. Admittedly, the real benefit would be slow in coming as the mirror starts close and images are of recent events. Generations for now would have the benefit of seeing hundreds and thousands of years in the past.
The faster we made it go, the faster the history would rewind.
Please, somebody tell me what is wrong with this idea! Because I’m totally ready to do it.
