How far would the Hubble telescope see if humans and human telescopes were scaled down to the size of bacteria?


telescope
Emperor asked:


Sometimes I get crazy random questions like this in my head=)
To reasonably answer this question you would need math and astronomy.

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2 Responses to “How far would the Hubble telescope see if humans and human telescopes were scaled down to the size of bacteria?”

  1. Chuck Says:

    Here are a couple different versions of your answer:

    Bacteria are about one millionth the length of a human, so if you divided the 13 billion light years that Hubble can see by a million, you would get 13,000 light years. That’s about one eighth of our galaxy.

    Or, you could say that the Hubble would see just as far, because it limited mostly by the age of the universe.

    Or, you could say the the Hubble wouldn’t see anything much at all, because the mirror wouldn’t be good enough to get any detail. The size of the mirror on a telescope limits the quality of image you get, and a bacteria-size mirror would just see a blur. Chuck

  2. Travis Says:

    As long as it could pick up at least one photon, its view range would be the same. Travis

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