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RedDeerGuy1's avatar

When we discover faster than light speed can we use a telescope to view crimes?

Asked by RedDeerGuy1 (25059points) 1 week ago

From light leaving our planet?

All we have to do is catch up to the light beams and view a crime in action.

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25 Answers

Zaku's avatar

No.

But pitch your idea to JJ Abrams. It’s more reasonable a suggestion than what he already put in his Disney Star Wars films.

Dutchess_III's avatar

You guys…your vision IS light. But it’s the light that hits your eyes at the moment.
Sunlight takes 8 minutes from the time it leaves the sun before you can see it. What you see outside during the day is light from 8 minutes ago.

If there was a duplicate planet Earth, but 65 million light years away, and if we could see it from this Earth, what we would see is what is happening 65 million years ago. SHARPTOOTH!!! AHHHHH!

Blackwater_Park's avatar

Faster than light travel is not possible.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Just wondering about the spirit of the question.

Forever_Free's avatar

How about we just put effort into stopping peoples desire to do criminal acts. There is a better chance of that happening.

Dutchess_III's avatar

@Forever_Free no one is putting one bit of effort into actually considering @RedDeerGuy1‘s question as a deterrent to crime.
We were just playing.

MakeItSo1701's avatar

I am pretty sure hundreds of years ago humans thought space travel to be impossible, we went to the moon and sent probes and stuff.

Who knows what will happen 400 years from now.

Blackwater_Park's avatar

@SergeantQueen Except, faster than light travel still won’t be possible.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@all Tackyons are predicted. They travel faster than light.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Link to a tackyon?

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@Dutchess_III Sorry I dont have the ability to link. As I am on my cellphone. It is a common term in physics.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I gotcha RDG.

A tachyon is a hypothetical particle that is thought to travel faster than light. The name comes from the Greek word tachys, meaning “swift”. While tachyons have never been observed in experiments, some theories predict that tachyon-like “quasiparticles” may exist in laser-like media. Tachyons are thought to have imaginary masses and some say that slowing a tachyon to the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy.

MakeItSo1701's avatar

Alright, give it 600 years then.

Zaku's avatar

Even if you can travel faster than light without experiencing time dilation, there are at least three other enormous problems with this idea that it seems to me should be obvious:

1) Ok, so “a crime” you are interested in seems to have occurred. You decide you want to see it with the RDG strategy. How long ago was it? How long does it take you to arrange a craft and get it going faster than light speed? How long is that total amount of time? Well, the light you want to “see” has that much of a head start on you, at the speed of light. So, how much faster than the speed of light can you go? Because you need to make up all of that distance. At best, you’re probably talking about one light day. Well, the farthest planet in the solar system (Neptune) is about 4.5 billion km away. One light day is 25,902 billion km away, so that’s where the light already got to by the time you’re optimistically getting up to speed – you need to catch up 26 trillion km – NOT “just” GO 26 trillion km – you need to go so much faster than light that you can catch up to it with that much head start.

2) Ok, so say you manage to go say twice the speed of light, and catch up to the light from Earth for a day old crime, 52 trillion kilometers away – and you brought a ridiculously capable telescope with you, and you point it toward Earth. Have fun with your light from 52 trillion kilometers away, that has been spreading out over all that distance. You are now more than one thousand times as far away as Neptune is from Earth. Enjoy your tiny bit of light. Good luck finding lots of useful information about the “crime”.

3) Why are you even thinking about doing all this multiply-impossible engineering and spaceflight for some hyper-obsessiion with “crime”? “Crime” is supposedly so vital to you, that THAT’s what you’d do with faster-than-light travel technology, impossible telescopic technology, and whatever immense resources it might take to go 52 trillion kilometers away (and then, I assume, reverse directions and come back to Earth)?

Dutchess_III's avatar

@Zaku, was just a fun question.

And those ”...three other enormous problems with this idea that it seems to me should be obvious would not be obvious to you if someone else hadn’t taught them to you.

RocketGuy's avatar

But the farther you are, the bigger the telescope you will need to see any details. e.g. most of the above ground nuclear tests were done 60+ years ago. To see them “live” you’d have to be 60+ light years away. They would look like tiny flashes – yay.

Blackwater_Park's avatar

Then there is the time dilation problem. When you relay the info back to earth, anyone who cared is long dead.

RocketGuy's avatar

You’re supposed to warp back and show pics directly from your camera.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Would help if we had an ansible? Maybe we could witness history and not just crime?

Dutchess_III's avatar

ansible?
Technically yes. But we couldn’t influence it.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@Dutchess_III An ansible is a theoretical object, from science fiction, that we can discover faster than light communication. It is still plausible, and not invented yet.

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