drdan82408a t1_j5ioz7y wrote
Sure, but there are a few problems with that.
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to see the earth from millions of light years away would require a telescope that is beyond the realm of imagination. The andromeda galaxy is about 2.5 million LY away, so think about resolving a single star in andromeda, and then think about resolving something much smaller in the glare of a star. But you did say a telescope strong enough, so….
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however many light years away you send the telescope, it will take that many years for the signal to return to earth. So if you sent the telescope to Andromeda 2.5 MLY from earth, you would get images back in 2.5 million years, of what would be then 5 million years ago.
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if there is intelligent life on earth in 2.5 million years; it will certainly be different than today. To give some perspective, that was when the first Homo habilis were differentiating from Australopithecus. I think it’s doubtful that our computers will be able to talk to each other when the signal arrives.
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similar to the problem in resolution of the telescope, keeping a radio signal coherent over that amount of space would be a heck of an engineering challenge and take a tremendous amount of energy.
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