this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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But only after 10 years. You couldn't see anything that wasn't visible from the viewpoint of the mirror beforehand, as from earth's point of view the mirror isn't there yet. And if you're there anyway… you can just look at Earth with the craft that's on the position of the mirror already.
That's why we need to find a natural mirror somewhere already out there, so we can see into our past. Something like a planet made of pure mercury, or an arrangement of blackholes doing gravitational lensing that bends our light back to us, or whatever. We'd also need instruments vastly superior than what we currently have in order to get any useful information out of seeing our own light bounced back to us from so far away
... But still! the idea that it's at least hypothetically possible to actually see our own past is very exciting!
I'm assuming the inverse square law would hinder us from seeing anything useful. But now I'm imagining scientists being ecstatic about discovering a foreign signal, only to realise its us from the past
That's highly unlikely basically because of the inverse square law. Even tightly focused beams dissipate quite effectively over light-hours, let alone light years. We'd be lucky to catch a single photon from our past selves over any significant distance.
For reference, look up how weak the signal is even just coming back from the moon when people try to hit the retroreflectors with lasers. Or how crazy weak the signals are when they reach Voyager.