From: andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk   
      
   In article , Joe   
   Strout wrote:   
   >   
   >> If this   
   >> is right.. then somewhere out there in the universe there is light   
   >> from millions of years ago showing how the world began???   
   >   
   > Well, the world (Earth) formed billions of years ago, not millions.  But   
   > otherwise, yes.   
   >   
   >> Would this work???   
   >   
   > Would what work?   
      
   If he's asking what I think he's asking...   
      
   "If there is light in the universe, showing the formation of the world,   
   can we use it to see the formation of the world - ie, see 'into the   
   past'". The short answer to this is "yes, but it wouldn't do you much   
   good"  - in order to use that light, you have to be vastly far away.   
      
   If we had an exceptionally powerful telescope, and it was sited several   
   billion light-years away, we would be able to see the galaxy as it was   
   at the era of the Solar System's forming. Getting it there is left as an   
   exercise to the reader :-)   
      
   However... doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, a hypothetical   
   one-kilometer diameter telescope situated, say, five billion light-years   
   away, is (in a perfect situation) going to intersect about one photon   
   from the Sun every thirty seconds or so. You'd be very hard-pressed to   
   get an image from that, so I wouldn't bet on being able to see the   
   formation of the Earth very clearly...   
      
   --   
   -Andrew Gray   
    shimgray@bigfoot.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)