ANSWERS: 8
  • Assuming perfect vision and no obstruction obviously, I would imagine that you would see whatever the mirror would display (i.e. whatever entities were at the correct angle for you to be able to see them in the mirror), but of 100 years ago. This is because it has taken 100 years for the light to cross the distance from the mirror to your retina. So, if you loked at the mirror now, you would not see what is happening around the mirror now, but rather what happened around the mirror 100 years ago. e.g. if you saw a red ball in the mirror, you would know that 100 years ago that red ball was there. Whether it is now or not is another matter entirely. This is how scientists are able to study the universe of billions of years ago, but using extremely high powered telescopes to see images of the universe from an immense distance away, the light of which is only now reaching us, so is in fact a long long long time ago. In a sense they are seeing into the past. EDIT Ok, I don't think I explained it too well. Imagine you had a red ball next to the mirror, so the time taken for light to go from the ball to the mirror is negligible (just like when you look in a mirror, it is for all intents and purposes instant). If this ball was bounced once, you standing 100 light years away would see the bounce 100 years later than it actually happened because this is the time it has taken for the light to be reflected from the mirror into your eyes. Or to be really pedantic, 100 years plus a really small and negligible bit more. If the ball was bounced where you stand, it would take 100 years for the light to reach the mirror and another 100 years to be reflected back to your eyes. This equals 200 years, by which time you may have gotten a bit hungry and left to get a sandwich, thus ruining the entire experiment. So you would see the ball in front of you, and then 200 years later you would see it bounce on the mirror. However it is still 100 years between the light leaving the mirror and reaching you, this remains constant no matter how you change the experiment, because of the distance of the mirror. So if the ball was 3578 light years behind you, then when you see it bounce iin the mirror it would be 3578 (time to reach you) + another 100 (time to get from you to the mirror) + another 100 (time to get from the mirror to you). So what you see is all relative to what is happening around you and the distances everything visible is to you and the mirror. The one constant though, is that whatever you see in the mirror, the light left the mirror 100 years ago. So if you have a friend right next to the mirror, regardless of how long it takes for light from other objects to reach the mirror (a ball 45 LY away, a candle 3 LY away, a dog 2 light seconds away, etc), whatever he sees in the mirror at any given moment, you will not see for another 100 years. So in summary, you would see lots of different ages (just like you do everyday - that tree on the horizon is actually a fraction of a nanosecond older than you see it, compared to the dog next to you which is a fraction of a fraction of a picosecond older than you see it), but the mirror image itself is 100 years old.
  • my pretty face i guess....
  • Aguy thats been dead for 100 light years.
  • Perhaps the same thing if you looked in that same direction straight on.
  • A skeloton.
  • If our eyes are 'perfect',in other words,can distinguish two items between any infinitesimal distance(or infinitesimal degrees),I agree that we can see ourselves 200 years later from now on. Now let's consider the practical situation.The resolution of our eyes is determined by the wavelength of light and the diameter of our eyes. See Aire disk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disc http://www.oldham-optical.co.uk/Airy%20Disk.htm In order to see ourselves 200Lys away,we must be able to distinguish a certain small degree.We can calculate it like this: degree=body height/distance =1.8m/200Lys=9.5*10^(-19) It's very very difficult for our eyes to distinguish such a small degree. For example:If we want to see an atom on the moon,we must be able to distinguish a degree of:10^(-10)m/10^9m So,to see ourselves 200Lys away is as difficult as to observe an atom on the moon. By the way,the bigger the diameter is,the higher the resolution can reach.This is why the telescopes in astronomical observatory are so big.
  • Ignoring the scientific realities and just suggesting a unique answer, try this. Smile big and wave pretty. Come back in a 200 years (100 light years each way.) and admire your young, handsome self!
  • Something like this..... But a hundred light years older

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