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Siellus t1_j493l35 wrote

In the way you're thinking

Short answer: no

Long answer: No, probably not - Obviously we can't say exactly what we'll find out/discover/invent in the future, but from everything we know so far the universe has rigid and strict laws about anything remotely like that.

We don't even know if the "past" or the "Future" exists. We assume just because we have a recollection of places, things and events that they must be somehow tangible or still exist somewhere.

That's a huge assumption - For all we know Time could be like a burning candle, Everything below us is unlit and doesn't exist in time yet and anything above is gone.

And you can't un-light a candle to exactly what it was before. Entropy doesn't work that way.

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skytomorrownow t1_j497s4n wrote

OK, maybe we cannot travel back in time, but could we observe the past directly in some way? Could we livestream the past and beam the stream forward in time in some way?

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Siellus t1_j498mmv wrote

Technically, yes.

Realistically, no.

Have one gigantic galaxy sized & perfectly calibrated refracted mirror 10 lightyears away perpetually focused on us at all times.

Point a gigantic planet sized telescope at it. done, you can now see Earth Live from 10 20 years ago.

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Willing_Definition71 t1_j499zwf wrote

If you looked at a mirror 10 light years away, you would see 20 years in the past

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Siellus t1_j49afp2 wrote

Derp, You're right - I meant 5 lightyears away (roughly near proxima centauri, but went with 5 rather than 4.2 because meh) and 10 for the whole journey back and forth.

But you're right, I'll change it! :)

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Willing_Definition71 t1_j4994vv wrote

I have heard similar ideas that if a time machine was created, that it would only be able to travel back to the point it was switched on

So since we have not invented it yet, nobody is travelling back this far

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mymymy23 t1_j498qjc wrote

If wormholes exist, couldn’t we warp to a space far away from earth, look at it, then watch the light just reaching us?

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Siellus t1_j49f02x wrote

Sure, You'd never find earth though. And you'd need a telescope the size of a planet at least, and even that probably won't be big enough.

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SiliconeArmadildo t1_j49o2v6 wrote

>could we observe the past directly in some way

Yes. When we see something in deep space, light years away, we're observing that something's past, in real time.

If we look at a star that say, 100 light years away, we're watching that star as it existed 100 years ago. To see what's happening with that star at this moment in time, we'll have to wait 100 years, perhaps longer if that star is moving away from earth.

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samjoe6969 t1_j494b1b wrote

One of my favorite quotes from a movie, ever, comes from men in black. Guess which one

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Siellus t1_j496syh wrote

You mean the one that gets posted on reddit almost every day, "Think about what we'll know tomorrow"

Yeah, but Time travel is a whole different thing.

People keep regurgitating "yeah but we also didn't think people could fly" Yeah but we knew it was possible, Birds fly. Nothing in the universe travels through time.

Yes "That we know of", but inadvertently, if something like that is so hard to find, it might just give credit to just how outside of the realm of possibility it really is for gigantic, living creatures such as us to do it.

Science fiction and television have made the prospect seem so tangible, when in reality it's a lot like asking "Will we ever be able to shoot giant beams of energy out of our hands and destroy mountains like in Dragon Ball Z?"

The answer is no. Not just because "we don't know how to do it yet" but because it's literally impossible to the point where it doesn't make any sense at all.

Should we just stop trying? Lol no, That's not what I'm saying and that would be ridiculous, I'm saying it's not an active field of study, because the road to get to it either doesn't exist, or is so so so so unimaginably far out of reach, it may as well be impossible.

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identityp2 t1_j494oma wrote

Yeah, I got neutralized. You gotta help me on that one.

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