the universe that we can see is much closer than we think

retracted

Originally posted by XPLodER

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
Gravity lenses only occur where spacetime warps around a very massive object. This causes the rays of light to be bent. Sometimes this bending will result in the magnification of the object, while in other situations it only distorts the object.

They do not function in the same manner as an optical lens. Neat idea though.

acually they do,
a recent discovery in optical lensing

A gravitational lens not only distorts the image of a distant object, it can also act like an optical lens, collecting and refocusing the light to make it appear brighter. Wondering if gravitational lensing might be responsible for the unusual brightness of these objects, the Herschel scientists teamed up with CfA astronomers Mark Gurwell and Ray Blundell to use the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to help resolve the question through its superb spatial resolution.

link to ex content

and our milky way is an optical lens

Yah, but the gravitational lensing effects we see are magnifying stuff, that's why we use them to look at objects that otherwise would be too dim for us to study, even with the Hubble.

Gravity Lensing Brightens Distant Galaxies
Astronomers who survey galaxies in the distant universe are getting some unexpected help from gravity, according to a new study.

In a presentation at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week and a related paper in the current issue of the journal Nature, researchers say that as many as 20 percent of the most distant galaxies currently detected appear brighter than they actually are, because of an effect called "strong gravitational lensing."

Source - SpaceDaily.com

And if they are magnifying stuff, following your line of reasoning, wouldn't we tend to think everything was actually closer than it really is?

Also, finding out how far away things are is a problem, but it is a problem with several solutions. Parallax works well for closer objects, but for the really far away(and thus really interesting) objects, we use the Standard Candle technique. There are two types of Main Sequence stars that we use as Standard Candles: the Cepheid variables and the RR Lyrae variables. We can recognize these stars out to a great distance, they have a very distinct signature. For even more distant objects, there are Pulsars and Quasars.

This explanation is incomplete; there are methods for proving the distance of a Standard Candle by calculating the sequence of all the stars within a globular cluster containing the Candle star. There is Apparent and Absolute Magnitude, and the luminosity-distance formula. In any case, anyone who is interested enough to bite into stuff like that can go here and here.

Don't forget your sliderule.

Originally posted by AstroBuzz
It's taken Voyager 1 33 years, 10 months and 29 days to get where it is today.
Mars, Asteroids, and Jupiter's moons are the only worlds we have a chance of visiting in person.

Yeah, but Voyager's just falling. It's been on a ridiculously slow, ponderous Hohmann Orbit. Add any amount of acceleration to that journey, say 0.01 G continuous, and you shave years off the travel time. Floating a few miles down a river in a tube can take all day. In a jet ski, you can do it in 15 minutes. Same thing.

Originally posted by smithjustinb
Wouldn't the lens around our solar system and the lens around another solar system cancel each other out... One magnifies while the other de-magnifies.


Sun ) ( Other Star.

Good depiction.


According to physics, light spread out in that type of lense. If you want to magnify you need another type of lense. Try crack open a binocular, and you will see that you need more than one lense to magnify or shrink.




I would think the distance we measure depend on which side of the sun Earth is positiond.
Simple Geometry would prove that.

There is approximate 16 light minuts between our position 1/1 and 1/7, this represent 1 of the triangles legs. Use trigonometry and measure 2 times with 6 months in between to get a picture.
Not sure 16 light minuts is enough to get sufficient angles to make the diffrence in distance matter.



If we build a little on your concept and we take the distance between stars into concideration we get this:

Sun ) ( Star no. 1 ) ( Star no. 2 ) ( Star no. 3.

Here the sun and field of star 3 combined could act as a spreadlense (dunno). But both the field of star 1 and star 2 magnify.
If gravity makes stars work as lenses as tread suggests. The further away you get, the more magnifying lenses would be used and the stronger the magnification would be. The reason it's not 3 spread lenses is because of the distance between star's compared to the stars actual gravitational field's.

It's been proven that light is bend around massive objects like stars, but I’m not certain i agree to the idea about our deception on the size of the universe. It’s a very intriguing question and worth scientific research.

why cant we just fly to our universe and get it done.