when telescopes look back at the start of the universe ( approx 13 billion years ) are we looking at ourselves ( or what would become the milkyway ) back then as well ?
In: Physics
Thankyou all for taking time to answer. I understand we can’t look back in time at ourselves, I guess the question should have been – we were we 13 billion years ago when we are seeing those distant objects.
No, we are looking at other galaxies some distance away. They are just far enough away that the light from them have taken 13 billion years to travel that distance at the speed of light. So we see them as they would have been 13 billion years ago.
No. We’re inside our own galaxy so there’s no way for us to see it from the outside. Light travels in straight lines. It’s not leaving our galaxy and then turning around halfway to come back for us to see it.
And is there a chance that we are seeing the same stars more than once, just at different times in their lifespans?
No. You can only look back at the start of the universe by looking at things that are really far away – in order to see something that is 13 billion years old, you need to look at light that has traveled for 13 billion years.
No, light is still traveling more or less linearly. So we’re still looking across distance as well as time when we observe remote objects. To look at ourselves back then we’d have to move the observer to one of these distant points and look back
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