This is one of those stupid questions I thought up in high school to annoy people. I’m pretty sure I asked my physics teacher this. His name was Mr. Waxman and I think I had convinced him that I was crazy. I decided to annoy Google’s AI by asking it this question, and this is the reply I received:
If your head were the Sun, you generally would not be able to see shadows.
Because shadows are formed when an object blocks light from a source, they always appear on the opposite side of that object from the light source. If you were the primary source of light, every object you looked at would be illuminated from your exact perspective, meaning any shadow it cast would be hidden directly behind it from your point of view.
However, there are a few scientific “loopholes” where you might still see them:
- Brighter Background Sources: If there were a light source even brighter than you (like a nearby supernova) behind you, you could see the shadow you cast on other objects.
- Shadows from Other Stars: While you couldn’t see the shadows you cast, you could see shadows created by other stars or light sources in the universe.
- Cosmic Ray Shadows: In a more technical sense, you could “see” a shadow if you were detecting high-energy cosmic rays instead of visible light, as you would block these particles from reaching objects like Earth.
- Perspective Shift: If your “eyes” were on the far edges of your massive solar head, you might catch a tiny sliver of a shadow cast by a nearby object (like the Moon) due to the slight difference in angle.
You can test this yourself: hold a phone flashlight directly between your eyes in a dark room. You will notice that almost all shadows on the objects you point it at seem to disappear.
Well, I guess that’s an answer I can be satisfied with. I’m glad I wasted Google’s time with my stupid question.