SaturnFive t1_ixjg85s wrote on November 23, 2022 at 10:04 PM

Reply to comment by CletusDSpuckler in ELI5 How can you look at Earth from another point in the universe and see a past version of itself? by SPLIFF_BAYLESS

It's accurate in the sense that is how it would work if you could be a light year away, but you're right, there's presently no way to get that far away. You could still go to Mars and look a couple minutes in the past. :)

The Voyagers are about a light day away, so they could see "yesterday" if they had the imaging capabilities onboard.

CletusDSpuckler t1_ixjlgts wrote on November 23, 2022 at 10:42 PM

Not disagreeing, just clarifying. You could look arbitrarily into the earth's past from our reference frame on the planet by viewing it from any distance as long as you did not travel from the earth to get there. When I saw the word travel, that is what I was referring to. If you left from the surface, you could never see anything that happened before you left, no matter how far nor how fast you traveled. That was my point. Which, in retrospect, was not the point you were making.