speedof light and dinasaurs

[matthay]

if it were possible to travel at the speed of light, and travel a sufficient distance with a powerful enough telescope would we be able to see the dinasaurs walking about the face of the earth

[fo3nix]

No-one really knows, because as you say, it's not possible to travel at the speed of light.

However, if you could, then the concept of distance as we know it is totally lost. You could travel any distance, in literally no time at all.

[CT]

No. Time on earth would pass as normal. Once you got to a distance of 65 million light years, the earth would be that far in the future, but you would be able to see earth as it was the day you left it. (I think)

[ugly_bob]

You'd have to travel faster than the spped of light, so that you were literally catching up the light that left earth 65 million years ago.

Not sure on this, but I think your chances of travelling that sort of distance in a straight line (as the light would have) without hitting anything are fairly remote

[fo3nix]

ugly_bob: exactly. Plus the little inconvenience that you can't actually travel at or faster than the speed of light.

[ugly_bob]

That's a small inconvenience (and only true if you believe Einstein). I personally traveeled faster than light this morning - thus getting to work before I left the house!

[whowhatwhy]

You need much faster than the speed of light to achieve this. How are you going to get 350-500 million light years from earth? Even at light speed that's 350 million years travelleing, by which time the light that left earth from the dinosaurs age would be double that distance again. If you travelled at the speed of light from the earth the best you could hope for is to 'freeze' time relative to your perception of the earth. (not that you could see it any more since you would be too far away!) This would appear to be one of the problems with time travel...we may already be time travelling all the time, but there is no way of proving this (yet) through independant verification as we are all in the same boat with the same relative viewpoint. But then there's Heisenburg's uncertainty principle which throws a spanner in the works... ;o)