[oneredoak]

I have followed the same idea regarding radio waves. Would it be possible to travel far enough out to receive radio or TV broadcasts from WWII? Presumably all that information in the form of waves is still out there (assuming it hasn't been too distorted by inference, or far too small of an amplitude).

[jakeogh]

It's late so I'm a bit too lazy to find the paper I remember, but this is the generalized form of that concept: https://thetechreader.com/tech/it-is-scientifically-possible...

[dvtv75]

I think that signal strength would decrease along the lines of the inverse square, so after you're some distance out, depending on the initial signal strength you'd find it had decayed to a level indistinguishable from background noise.

I think.

[oh_sigh]

No, because you can't catch up with radio waves since they are going the speed of light.

[anonytrary]

But using OP's idea, they could be reflected back at the earth, such that 2018 - 1942 = 2 x numLightYears away from the scattering object. I agree, you wouldn't be able to go "in front of the waves" but you might be able to go to a point in space where they'd eventually arrive through scattering. I think it's very unlikely anyways since the solid angle for them to be reflected right back at a certain point is super small.

[jcims]

Very unlikely indeed. I wish I was smart enough to do the math but I'm sure it's more difficult than resolving a planet 50k light years away. Probably more like resolving a planet in another galaxy.

[anonytrary]

I fixed the typo, the factor of a half should have been on the other side of the equation. To actually calculate a realistic probability would require more work; farther objects would imply higher attenuation, etc.