I read that the Hubble telescope could look 13.2 billion years back in time – what would it see if it turned 180 degrees and looked the other way?
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Everybody is the center of the universe due to how it expands universally. If I were in another galaxy looking somewhere, what I saw would show me as in the center of the universe and what you saw here would show you as in the center of the universe.
There’s a fixed limit to what can be seen by any telescope so if the Hubble points in one direction it’ll see a certain amount of time into the past and if it points in the exact opposite it’ll see the same amount of time in the past.
There is a caveat though due to things like gravitational lensing. If you find such a lens effect, then you can see further away than you normally could and therefore further into the past. This requires a very specific alignment of galaxies and dark matter between you and the object on the other side of it. If you’re referring to this effect as the limit, then the time you can see into the past differs based on how strong the effect is and where it’s located. Different lensing effects magnify what’s behind them differently so you aren’t guaranteed to see the same timeframe into the past with every lensing event found.
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