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[The worm]

InfiniteNow sense of humour i recognize that but being dyslexic i dont tend to waste time reading non factual stories and tend to stick to things that are ment to be in "the real world" what ever that is ment to be.i still hold the same view that time and space arent one of the same and the big bang wasnt the first i could spend hours reading through what others had written to support my ideas but why!!?? there only some ones else s ideas that dont tend to rely on fact but there ideas:eek2: but (the worm says)thanx for the reply.

[Pyrotex]

Sweet idea Craig! ...The resources to "see" without missing something potentially essential would overwhelm the Braks. They would stop eating & sleeping & working in their obsession to see more; to see it all :confused:

Yes. Exactly as the Alphs had planned all along. 20,000 years later, when the Alph invasion fleet arrives at Brak (traveling on average 1/4 c) they will find an intellectually elite civilization so obsessed with their own past, that they will have no defenses at all. Bwahahahaha! Now the ever-patient Alphs have two planets!!!

[Pyrotex]

There's a story called "The Light of Other Days" by Baxter and Clarker where people invent a "WormCam" ...TFS

Wasn't there another story, perhaps by Arthur C. Clark (???) on the same theme? Civilization collapsed because everyone could hook these doohickies up to their TV sets and see their own pasts. Reality porn became a world-wide obsession. Just tune in to watch anyone who ever lived have sex. People died by the billions when the infrastructure collapsed. It didn't stop until the electric utilities died. Then the childredn of the survivors had to learn how to read all over again.... Can't remember the title.

[CraigD]

Wasn't there another story, perhaps by Arthur C. Clark (???) on the same theme?

Methinks you may be remembering “slow glass” from the 1966 Bob Shaw story “Light of Other Days”. I read this story as a child, and remember it to this day.

[TheFaithfulStone]

The one I'm talking about is by Arthur C. Clarke (not Clarker... whoops) but I don't remember any destruction of society.

 

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

 

Odd that they both have the same title.

 

TFS

[CraigD]

I've some even more exotic variations on this theme (which allow one to dispense with the role of the improbably altruistic Alfs, and increase the utility of the technique), but want to present the core idea simply before describing them.

I believe a description of the promised “exotic variation” is overdue.

 

Recall that the major shortcoming of the telescope/time viewer is that, to see one's own past without the help of a distant, unknown/unknowable civilization, one must somehow "outrun" light, requiring something either outright forbidden or highly implausible under current theory.

 

An alternative to the artificially manufactured and place mirrors described in post #1 is some naturally occurring equivalent. Since it's vanishingly unlikely that a such a precise optical system would just happen accidentally, an alternative light direction altering (or, even better, storing) mechanism is needed. I believe a good candidate for such a mechanism is a constellation of 3 or more star-mass black holes.

 

Consider a photon that passes very near, but not through, the event horizon of a black hole. According to relativity, it will take a very long time to do so (as measured by an observer far from the EH). Thus, in the vicinity of a black hole, a correctly positioned device could detect photons that arrived in the vicinity thousands or millions of years earlier. From the exit vectors of these photons, it should be possible to calculate their entry vectors, and thus the precise direction of their origin. As with an ordinary mirror, this makes it possible to construct an image. If the data from 3 or more such distant (light-year-scale) black hole-vicinity detectors is combined (likely using advanced statistical methods to overcome uncertainty about the precise relative position of the black holes), it should be possible to achieve resolution equivalent to a single telescope mirror as large as the entire constellation (the same “synthetic aperature” effect described in post #1, a technique widely used on Earth now).

 

Unlike the Alfs' optical mirror in the previous scenario, such a system would not have to be precisely aligned – the image would be constructed from the analyzed data from the detectors. With at least 4 such black holes in a roughly tetrahedral arrangement, each with many and/or movable detectors, the system could be omnidirectional – not essential for purposes of peering into the visible history of the Earth, but handy for viewing the past of other astronomical objects. It would not be limited to viewing a fixed period in time – by selecting photon trajectories that passed closer or further from the event horizon, one can select a wide range of arrival times. It would also not be limited to the visible light spectrum, but to the spectrum to which the detectors are sensitive.

 

The scientific value of such a system is staggeringly enormous. Limited only by the age of the black holes used, one could rewind and fast-forward through the history of life on Earth, the formation of the solar system, and the evolution of stars, making all these disciplines no longer primarily theoretical, but observational, no longer a matter of best guess, but of observed data.

 

I’ve not attempted to work out the physics of this in detail, since: a) they’re difficult, well beyond my current or lifetime best competence; and B) their consequences are practically useless, as our civilization appears far from the capability of space travel and engineering such a system requires. There may be a fundamental problem rendering such a system impossible. I’ve not been able, in years of casual thought experimentation, to find such a problem.

[Kayra]

Well Craig, you promised us something exotic :hihi:

 

Here is a kicker for you then. If that system is possible (and I do not see why not), it might just be prudent to look for such congruences of black holes. Even if we do not currently have the technology to accomplish your concept, the likelyhood is that other more advanced races would. If you wanted to locate them, perhaps that might be a good starting place;)

[nkt]

The biggest issue with this is that the Braks would only see the years from (at the earliest, for a probe travelling at lightspeed) the launch of the space probe, and the info would take another 10,000 years to get back to the Brak's home planet. By this time, the Braks aren't going to care a tiny bit about some new versions of stuff they recorded from 20,000 years ago, since, to launch the probe, they would already have been at a stage where recording things on a camera would be quite possible.

 

Name two things you care about from 20,000 years ago on earth. Now name two things you will care about on earth in 20,000 years time, that doesn't involve planet-wide destruction! Big Brother & Survivor don't count, since that will still be on repeat.

[Ahmabeliever]

This is a great idea.

 

To answer what I'd want to see/look for proof of in the past.

 

Dinosaurs, comets, evolution, eden, original land mass and movement. Yeti. ;)Answers to problems perplexing and vast.

 

From the future.

 

Are we still warring, I'd want a flying car, a good cold beer, and a cybergenetic 5000 maidslut. :)

 

Disclaimer: The previous comment is in no way intended to be sexist, it is robotist.

 

Now... sci fi, love it. Let's see if I get what you're saying.

 

We find a planet, for simplicity sake it is 10LY away.

 

We record it from Earth (outside the atmosphere and interference of course) and then we go there.

 

Once we can send communication instantly across vast spaces (can we yet?), we have a planet capable of monitoring it's own past for ten years.

 

Or if it takes 5 years to send the data, for the remaining 5 years.

 

Nice :phones: Big brother aint got a patch on you.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Once we can send communication instantly across vast spaces (can we yet?), we have a planet capable of monitoring it's own past for ten years.

 

Or if it takes 5 years to send the data, for the remaining 5 years.

 

Whoops. It takes 10 years to send data 10 light years. So - as it turns out, you'd always JUST miss out on a clear view of the past. Frustrating!

 

The original concept requires that there be an especially friendly (or especially evil) race of aliens to set the telescope up for you. The second concept only requires you to move black holes around.

 

But still - those are both a far cry from sending something ten light years in only five light years.

 

TFS

 

TFS

[CraigD]

Let's see if I get what you're saying.

 

We find a planet, for simplicity sake it is 10LY away.

 

We record it from Earth (outside the atmosphere and interference of course) and then we go there.

 

Once we can send communication instantly across vast spaces (can we yet?), we have a planet capable of monitoring it's own past for ten years.

That’s pretty much it, except that instant communication (which, as we presently understand the laws of nature, we most likely can’t ever do) isn’t necessary.

 

Picture this: A super-high resolution telescope (for the sake of discussion, let’s say one of us humans’, sometime in the next century or so) takes pictures of a distant planet where interesting, primordial (eg: dinosaurs) or historic things are happening. We think “I bet the folk on that planet a few billion years from when those events happened would like to see them!”, package up the video, and send it to them as best we can. They get the video, and are amazed and grateful, even though we humans are likely long gone.

 

The second, “more exotic” variation I discuss looks at ways that we could see ancient images of Earth without relying on acts of alien altruism or devices believed to be impossible, such as instant-travel wormhole subway systems or FTL spacecraft. In short, much of the light of ancient images from Earth is still out there. Most of it is moving away from us at the speed of light, and can never be overtaken and captured, but some has encountered objects that have changed its direction in a way that makes it possible for us to capture it. A nice, optically perfect huge-effective aperture mirror, or any huge reflector who’s aberrations we could correct reflecting it back at us would be ideal, but minus high-tech, high-altruism alien helpers, aren’t likely to exist. My wild speculation (much more SF than practical science) is that optics made out of black holes or other super-dense naturally occurring bodies might, with some very advanced engineering, be usable as an equivalent.

The original concept requires that there be an especially friendly (or especially evil) race of aliens to set the telescope up for you.

Correct.

The second concept only requires you to move black holes around.

What I intended to outline was a scheme where you don’t need to move black holes, or in any other way actually build any optics, but rather only find a suitable constellation of naturally occurring ones, precisely measure their position and velocity, sample the light deflected by them, and synthesize it into high-resolution images – a piece of cake .

 

Unless you can somehow outrun and catch up with the outgoing ancient light – which current physics strongly suggest is impossible – any scheme where you have to set up the optics before the light arrives is doomed to fail. We must somehow make do with the optics that just happened to be there when the light arrived.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I'm a bit fuzzy on how the black hole things would work exactly, then. I figured out that that there's photons reflected from earth that have been orbiting the event horizon for a looooong time and if you could "capture" them you could see what was going on however long ago.

 

Now, I know you need at least three of them to make a telescope - and that they'd just so happen to have to point pretty much directly at earth for that to work. (And you'd still have to have some KILLER optics to get the old light that was coming off the horizon.)

 

But how exactly does four make it omnidirectional? You're now beyond my astronomy skills.

 

Diagrams Craig! Diagrams!

 

TFS

[Ahmabeliever]

So, for communications faster than the speed of light. What's the fastest now - laser? Radio waves?

 

The speed of sound is obviously limited. Yet radio takes this limited media and greatly accelerates it.

 

What are the limiting factors to current communication systems?

 

The only concept of time travel I figured was, I think, mathematically impossible. I'm sure it's a common thought.

 

An object travels 100 mph over 1 mile. Takes .001 hours.

Same object at 100 000 mph - Time travelled - .000001 hours.

 

The problem is infinite reduction. I can't mathematically jump the moving object past the point of zero. Or... can I?

[Thunderbird]

You got me thinking about light and memory, and how it seems to exist as an inherently valuable aspect of the mind, DNA or even as a universal aspect of the cosmos.

Did you ever think that black holes are ordering and winding up the photons in this way may in fact be the way the universe orders and stores information? Think about this.. the stars provide a basic palette of the spectrum of light, this simple spectrum travels outward, bounces around until it hits ether an eye, or a black hole were in both cases and no other, is very neatly ordered into a historical record. Like some galactic LP. This light however is now full of information, a higher energetic state greater than the sum of the rainbows spectrum, but a high order spectrum.

[Ahmabeliever]

Ahah! Dont let any creationists hear you say that they'll think a black hole is Gods recording of all our misdeeds. If that's the case I'd like to take a page from the book of a local here who tried to destroy Govt records, blow the damn thing up.

[TheFaithfulStone]

uhh....

 

A) Nothing travels faster than light.

Radio doesn't use sound waves - it uses radio waves. Which is more like light than sound. (It's electromagnetism anyway.)

C) I'm able to travel forward in time at the rate of 60 seconds per minute,so there.

 

An object travels 100 mph over 1 mile. Takes .001 hours.

Same object at 100 000 mph - Time travelled - .000001 hours.

 

Ahh. Not quite. From the point of view of the object (the fast one) it actually takes a little bit less time than that. Search for relativity on this forum for lots of good reasons why this is so.

 

For a great laymans explanation - try this one

 

tfs

[Thunderbird]

Ahah! Dont let any creationists hear you say that they'll think a black hole is Gods recording of all our misdeeds. If that's the case I'd like to take a page from the book of a local here who tried to destroy Govt records, blow the damn thing up.

 

Don't let religious or creationist idiots limit a

possibility a higher order of things not yet discovered.

 

 

So I walk on uplands unbounded,

and know that there is hope

for that which Thou didst mold out of dust

to have consort with things eternal.

-- The Dead Sea Scrolls