Welcome to another fascinating episode of Rusty Science. Today we are going to see the answer of an interesting question. Do all our hopes of seeing alive dinosaurs lost? Watch till end of this video to find out
As title mentioned, can we see the dinosaurs lived 250 million years ago in this time frame? Pewwww... No chance. Right? But I'm bringing you a way to see even today. Not dead but alive. Before we see how to see dinosaur, lets first see about "See" or "seeing". What do you mean by seeing? Theoretical there must be a observable object and a observer are needed to complete a viewing cycle. Observing object can be anything around us and Observer can be "YOU" (For me this camera). But we are forgetting one crucial element in this process which is called "LIGHT".
Everyone in this world knows without light we cannot see anything. But have you ever wondered why this light is so important to see any object or what light is it doing to the real world so we can see it with our eye? I will illustrate with this ping pong ball. When this ball hits on any object it get reflected and reached the destination, in this case "a bin". Due to the gravity this ball looses it's energy and fall into the bin. In case, if there is no gravity like outer space, it will keep travelling in the same direction. In the same way, if the light hits on any surface it will get reflected by the object and start travel in the reflected direction. Though we call it "light", basic building block of light is "Photon". Since it do not have mass, gravity like our earth cannot make any bigger impact on photons. So it can continue travel in the reflected direction. This light eventually hit out eye's retina, the based on the information retina received, our brain reconstruct it into a image.
Due to this reason, when it was dark we cannot see anything in the room. There is no light to bounce on object and reach our eyes. One thing we are clear from above example is, light or photon can be considered as a ping pong ball because it has particle nature. If light can be considered as a ping pong ball, then it will have a speed. It can travel. This basic idea can reveal many interesting facts about our universe. As we have seen in the example, if the light reflected from the object carried the information, the person standing closed to the object receives the information first, the person standing far will receive little late as we have seen in the ping pong example.
Have a look at the following scenario: it has a light source, a object (counter), person A and person B. When the light is switched on, light travel from the source hit on the target and reach these people (Person A and Person B). Light can travel in the speed of 300 thousand kmps (299 792 458 m / s). The amount of distance light can travel in one second is called one light second. Consider the object, person A and Person B are separate by a light second away from each other in a straight line. the counter will constantly get incremented by one for every one second. In that case, once the light hit on the counter, Person A or B cannot see anything, but after a second, only persona A will See "Number 1" not person B (He will still see no number). Meanwhile Number in the counter will change to 2. Next second, counter will change to "Number 3", but Person B will see "Number 1" and Person A will see "Number 2", This sequence will keep on going. Lets take one more example, when number 100 comes in the counter, person A will see "number 99", person be will see "Number 98", but a "person x" who is 100 light seconds away from the source counter will see number "1" now. That means the photon bounce back from the source will keep travelling in straight line until some interrupt happens. This chain of event will keep happening infinitely.
The distance light has traveled in one year is called light year, this is the unit we use to calculate the distance between celestial bodies. Our neighbor star Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years away. That means If somebody looking at a telescope right now from alpha centauri, they can see the events happened 4.37 years ago in the earth as live.
Let's back to dinosaur conundrum, there is a far far away galaxy called "UGC 1382" or "Frankenstein Galaxy", it is located around 250 million light years away from our solar system. As I mentioned earlier, dinosaurs were living in this earth 250 million years ago. In that case, the light hit on those dinosaurs would possibly reach the Frankenstein Galaxy just now. In case, intelligent aliens live in that UGC 1382 galaxy attempts see us through their high tech equipment, they would possibly seeing the dinosaurs roaming around our earth right now.
What that has to do with us? How can we see those dinosaurs? Misleading title? to wait for one more week.
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