Musings on SCIENCE!!!! (Part 1)
Before I begin, I know that there are those of you who will read this who are real, bonifide scientists who work in laboratories and know more about this stuff than I do. Please correct me on any of this that I get wrong. That said, I've been thinking in a scientific vein lately. Specifically, some implications of certain scientific laws and theories when taken together.
This was a pretty long and complex thought process, so I'm chopping it up into multiple entries.
1. Time Is Relative
For those not familiar with this theory, which I believe was demonstrated in an experiment by Albert Einstein, let me break it down for you: A "light year" is the distance light travels in a year. Now, light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so the distance it travels in a year is quite mind-boggling. So if you were stargazing and looked at a star that was 6,000 light years away, you wouldn't be seeing the star as it actually is at the time you're looking at it because it has taken the light 6,000 years to travel to where you can see it (if there was no light, of course, you couldn't see the star). Rather, you'd be seeing the star as it was 6,000 years ago. Similarly, if someone in that star's solar system, which is 6,000 light years away from ours, had a powerful telescope and decided to use it to look at the surface of the earth and saw human civilization, he wouldn't see us as we are now, but rather us as we were 6,000 years ago. He would see all those civilizations long gone, and all those people who have been dead for millenia. Not us today.
So when you look through space, at least over astronomically long distances, you are literally looking back in time.
However, both you and the person 6,000 light years away are looking at each other's part of space at the exact same moment, right? And yet you are seeing each other's part of space as it was 6,000 years beforehand. So there is you looking at the star 6,000 light years away, the person in the solar system 6,000 light years away looking at the earth, and then the moment that each of you are looking at which happened 6,000 years ago on your respective planets.
Which of those four moments is "now"?
After this has sufficiently baked your noodle, feel free to proceed to the next entry. Don't worry. This still bakes my noodle every time I think about it. And it makes me really, really happy too. :)
This was a pretty long and complex thought process, so I'm chopping it up into multiple entries.
1. Time Is Relative
For those not familiar with this theory, which I believe was demonstrated in an experiment by Albert Einstein, let me break it down for you: A "light year" is the distance light travels in a year. Now, light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so the distance it travels in a year is quite mind-boggling. So if you were stargazing and looked at a star that was 6,000 light years away, you wouldn't be seeing the star as it actually is at the time you're looking at it because it has taken the light 6,000 years to travel to where you can see it (if there was no light, of course, you couldn't see the star). Rather, you'd be seeing the star as it was 6,000 years ago. Similarly, if someone in that star's solar system, which is 6,000 light years away from ours, had a powerful telescope and decided to use it to look at the surface of the earth and saw human civilization, he wouldn't see us as we are now, but rather us as we were 6,000 years ago. He would see all those civilizations long gone, and all those people who have been dead for millenia. Not us today.
So when you look through space, at least over astronomically long distances, you are literally looking back in time.
However, both you and the person 6,000 light years away are looking at each other's part of space at the exact same moment, right? And yet you are seeing each other's part of space as it was 6,000 years beforehand. So there is you looking at the star 6,000 light years away, the person in the solar system 6,000 light years away looking at the earth, and then the moment that each of you are looking at which happened 6,000 years ago on your respective planets.
Which of those four moments is "now"?
After this has sufficiently baked your noodle, feel free to proceed to the next entry. Don't worry. This still bakes my noodle every time I think about it. And it makes me really, really happy too. :)