What Does A Telescope See?
Light is a transfer of energy flowing from a high source to objects with less energy and it expands in all directions.
An image is a bundle of coherent waves traveling in one direction.
A group of people sitting in a circle looking straight ahead will all see different images but the light producing those images will pass through the center of the circle without the different images interfering with the other images. At the center of the circle light is flowing in all directions but images are flowing in one direction.
The speed of light is not constant but changes as the medium it is traveling in changes. This change in speed and size of an image can be seen in water.
Underwater objects appear larger and closer because the light is traveling faster in the water than in air. In a swimming pool, where lanes are established with ropes supported by floats, if you look at the floats while at the surface you will see the bottom half of the float, that is under water appears larger than the top half that is in the air.
Even though both halves are at the same distance and the light traveling in the water is passing through more molecules the bottom half appears larger because the light is traveling faster.
This can also be seen with a diagram of a simple magnifying lens.
Line A and B are two light waves carrying parts of an image. When they enter the lens they refract, going to the back of the lens, creating a larger image. Since line B is longer than line A the only way the light can be coherent and preserve the image emerging from the lens is if the light travels faster in the lens material.
Light is an electromagnetic wave and the medium in which it travels are the electric and magnetic fields produced by objects.
As the magnetic and electric fields emitted by an object decrease in strength as distance from the source increases, the speed of the light will also decrease and the image of the object will become smaller as the light disperses.
In space when the light enters the electric and magnetic fields emitted by another object, as these fields increase in strength, the light forming the image will converge producing a larger image causing more light to pass through the pupil of your eye.
Light or electromagnetic waves are a result of energy and that energy will continue to flow, gaining and losing speed, until it is absorbed by another object. This is what causes
the red, blue, and purple shift as light travels through the universe.
As the fields of the object emitting the image grow weaker the light goes slower producing a red shift. When this disturbance then enters the fields of another object, it will go faster as the strength of the fields increase, producing a blue shift. The blurring, or purple shift of spectral lines, is a result of the light traveling different distances in fields where field strength decreases and increase.
It is not because the source of light is moving both towards and away from the observer. The greater the blurring the greater the number of fields the light has traveled through.
As the speed of light changes it refracts or bends as the speed increases and decreases. Light does not travel in straight lines but in arcs and it will continue to travel, worming its way through space, until the energy producing the disturbance is absorbed by another object.
Why then, when you look through a powerful telescope does the universe seem cluttered with matter emitting light? All the matter in the universe continuously moves and emits energy. Most that energy is traveling through the universe until that rare occasion where it encounters matter and is absorbed.
What we see when we look through a telescope is not just multiple objects emitting light but also multiple light images emitted by those objects as they travel through space. It is like looking at a photo album of images of the same person not arranged in chronological order but instead of one person many, many individuals.
We see what objects looked like at various stages of their existence. We are not seeing into the past but images of the past and the object in the image may have ceased to exist but the images it emitted will still remain, traveling in space until absorbed.
Unlike a photo album the images in the universe have motion and what we see is multiple film clips being projected on one screen simultaneously. This and the distortion of depth perception caused by magnification will produce optical illusions.
No, it is because two film clips are being simultaneously projected in the same area.
Because the light from emitted from objects continues to expand and contract as it travels through space, it is impossible to determine what magnification it has when we view it. From our perspective the moon and sun are the same size, as the moon blocks the sun during a solar eclipse.
With light traveling through space we have no idea how far it has traveled or the strength of the fields it has traveled through.
This means we have no idea of what the magnification of the image we view is and no way to compare its size with the size of a known object.
We should not believe that the images we receive from telescopes represent the reality of the universe.
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Tom
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A telescope always sees the past. That giant flare from the sun happened 8 minutes ago. That nova in our galaxy might have happened 1,000 or years ago. That galaxy that your are looking at that is a billion light years away is seen as it was a billion years ago, not as it might be today.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb and Tom,
Herb, you wrote: “Light is a transfer of energy flowing from a high source to objects with less energy and it expands in all directions.” With this statement your deny we see direct solar radiation from the sun and direct starlight from a star (another sun with a possible planetary system). Herb, read what tome wrote for he makes no contradictory statements. Good job Tom.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
You are questioning the barber’s image where you see yourself in the mirror placed behind you multiple times in the mirror situated in front of you. This example can be extended to the universe where the space-time phenomenon is thought to curve the straight path expected by light causing the multiple image effect you refer to.
Tom has referred to the time element which might indicate that the previous image is also deferred in time, which results in a slightly different image of the same object due to its normal progression over time.
To my mind, this highlights the conundrum present in your statement “Light is an electromagnetic wave and the medium in which it travels are the electric and magnetic fields produced by objects.” So how does a light wave transfer between electric and magnetic fields without passing through a mass field – following the e=mc2 formula? It seems there is an ephemeral mass stage which causes light to be influenced by a GRAVITY field. Gravity fields follow the inverse square law which makes light vulnerable to speed change depending on the number of gravity field changes it has to pass through to get to earth. Hence red and blue shifted light – not curved light to the extent you are proposing. If this is the case we are looking at discrete objects through a telescope – not the same object multiple times.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
A changing electric field will cause a change in the magnetic field while a constant current will not. This is how an alternator works as compared to a generator.
There is no conversion into mass. E does not equal mc^2. Your belief that light can have mass while not having mass (ephemeral) defies your premise. If light changes to mass then time must exists at the speed light since there must be time for there to be change. The problem in believing in nonsense is that you must create more nonsense trying to maintain the belief.
Electric fields are produced by mass while magnetic fields are produced by energy. Gravity is a non directional field (magnetic field being a directional energy field) produced by energy, not mass, and it decreases linearly from the source (Kepler’s law (C=dv^2). Its effect will decrease by the square of the distance just as the area of a circle changes as the square of the radius.
Referring to Tom’s statement. Since light travels at a finite speed everything we see is an image from the past whether it be a distant star or the nose on your face.
Herb
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Robert Beatty
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An alternator and an electric motor both have a stator and a rotor. EM has neither.
If EM has no influence under gravity, please explain the Shapiro effect when an EM is bounced off Venus, but takes a measurably longer time to return to Earth as the return beam approaches the stronger gravity associated with the Sun?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
I have no explanation for the Shapiro effect. Is there a grater effect wen an EM is bounced off Mercury? If this due to the gravity of the sun shouldn’t there be a greater effect.
Herb
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
Mercury and Venus have been tested. Venus is a greater distance and its location in time, more accurately known. It is an ongoing investigation as more accurate measurement systems become available. It is currently used as evidence of GR, but I am yet to be convinced. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_time_delay
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Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
They are grasping at straws to try to keep their belief in GR. It doesn’t work with the time variations in the atomic clocks of satellites and it can never work. As you approach a source of gravity time slows (expands) which means since the speed of light s constant, distance also expands. The closer you get to a source of gravity and the stronger the field the further you are from the source. Something that is a function of distance (acceleration) cannot be identical to something (gravity) that is an inverse function of distance.
Herb
Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
IMO the simplest answer is that EM includes an ephemeral mass component. Ockham’s razor approach.
Herb Rose
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Hi again Robert,
In my opinion there is no mass just energy fields (magnetic, gravity, and strong nuclear) and matter’s electric fields (positive and negative). Energy fields are attracted to positive matter fields and displace negative field. Mass is just how strongly a positive electric field is contained by an energy field. Two components making the universe with two forces.Simple Ockham’s razor. Explains beta decay, spontaneous splitting of a neutron into a proton, electron, and gamma ray, and fission.
Herb
Citizen Quasar
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Another waste of time.
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ecm
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In his comment at 8:15 pm, Herb contradicts himself by stating that light is constant, while in his post he states the speed varies depending on the energetic fields of the sending and absorbing objects.
Let’s put this partly aside for now–and focus on the well-accepted “fun-fact” that what we actually see in deep space is an illusion, or really just the image of the object traveling towards us, but not the material object itself. We all congratulate ourselves on this neat thought experiment–even though this contradicts observable reality. Does cosmology obviate our laws of physics while having supernatural ones? When was the last time we saw a “dead” object pulsating and giving off light? Never happens as one can easily notice the glow difference between something energetic and its opposite. As the manifestation of light depends on an material object with an internal energetic source (i.e., glowing cell, glow worm, radiant child, glowing mountains), said object has to be active, otherwise the “stream” of light which conduits through the medium of space would inevitably weaken and disappear; think of a water spigot closed and its effect on the flow even miles away as there is a constant “push” from the origin to the end–when the origin is extinguished, all of its components are weakened. Therefore, there are no “obsolete” deep space object projecting an image or “dead” black holes, as objects from trillions (multi-squared) miles away would never make it to our planet if it disappeared. Furthermore, the travel of this dead light would have to traverse through space, which is filled with material/objects that would surely absorb this light image by the time it reached earth.
The above is the first part of my explanation on light travel–from the originating object’s location, but there is also the second part which completes the seeing of the image, and that is our eyes. The eyes are not a passive magnifying glass but an energetically active organ which extends outwards to infinity. This is why one sees a spoon 1 foot away or a constellation (tens of trillions miles) within the same time–instantaneously. Think of the star so far away that its light does not brighten our sky-and thus does not reach us-but we still see it. Further, how can this starlight travel to us through the dark space without lighting it up along the way? Our close Sun on the other hand, does reach us and we see its rays. But the strange conundrum of its light traveling in dark space strikes again. Not to worry, as the invisible solar rays light up our atmosphere when it contacts it.
This is my heretical thesis in contra to the mantra of “what you see is from the past” and obviously questions Big Bang cosmology.
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Ecm,
You raise some interesting points which leaves me with the conclusion that the universe is an ongoing ‘live’ object. If this is the case now then why was it not so previously? So, yes the big bang does not fit this observation. My thoughts on the big bang are at http://www.bosmin.com/PSL/BigBangOrSteadyState.pdf
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Herb Rose
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Hi Ecm,
I did not say light was constant but was referring to a current of electrons flowing. If you place a wire in a magnetic field then start a current through it, the wire will move perpendicular to the magnetic field according to the right hand rule as the current builds. Once their is a constant flow of electrons the wire returns to its original position.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed only transferred to another object. Since light is a form of energy it will only disappear when it is absorbed be another object, so the light emitted by an object will continue to travel until it meets another object. Light is not a particle but a change in the electric and magnetic fields radiated by objects. The objects field do not extend out into the universe but only until they meet fields of equal strength emitted by other objects. It is a transfer of a disturbance from the fields of objects that is light carrying an image of objects. Think of it as the difference between direct current and alternating current. The electrons in direct current must travel from a source, through a wire, and then back to the source. In alternating current the electrons move about 2 meters then flow in the other direction. It is much more efficient (less energy expended) to just push and pull electrons through 2 meters of wire then the entire distance. The light you see with your eyes is a disturbance in the fields being radiated by your eyes caused by a disturbance in the fields adjacent to your eyes created by a disturbance at the source.
The object where the disturbance began has continued to move from that position or may even be gone but the disturbance will continue to travel in the fields emitted by other objects until absorbed. Think of it as aiming a gun at a moving object. You must not aim at the object but where it will be, allowing for the time it takes for the bullet travel and the distance traveled by the object. The object you see is not where you see it because of the time it takes for the light to travel to your eyes.
Herb
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Michael Clarke
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All this hinges upon the speed of light.
What if that is NOT a constant but dependant upon the strength of the gravity field through which it is passing.
Just a small amount would explain the many conundrums expressed here.
Michael Logician
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Herb Rose
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Hi Michael,
Gravity and magnetism are both forms of radiated energy. Magnetism is a directional field (similar to a spotlight or laser) caused by the electrons surrounding a nucleus while gravity is a non-directional energy field. Because the concentrated magnetic field produces a stronger effect we identify light as an electromagnetic wave but it is a disturbance moving through the electric field radiated by matter and both the gravity and magnetic fields radiated by energy.
There are two indestructible components that make up the universe: energy and matter and the interaction of their forces produce what we call reality. Energy is attracted to positive matter and being a stronger force, displaces negative matter. The energy surrounds the positive nucleus forming a compressing (not binding) force holding the nucleus together against the repelling force between protons and is radiated out of the atom as gravity and magnetism. The electrons in the nucleus are the weak nuclear force also holding it together. If an electronic is exposed to the compressing energy force, it is expelled from the nucleus as beta decay. How can nuclear forces that are too weak to hold a nucleus together expend energy ejecting something that helps hold the nucleus together result in a stable nucleus. containing an even stronger repelling force? It is not logical.
Herb
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