Cosmos with Neil De Grasse Tyson Premieres Tonight

[pocaracas]

The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light years from earth. According to some beliefs, that's the age of the whole universe. But if the universe were only 6,500 years old, how could we see the light from anything more distant than the Crab Nebula? We couldn't. It wouldn't have been enough time for the light to get to earth from anywhere farther away than 6,500 light years in any direction. That's just enough time for light to travel through a tiny portion of our Milky Way Galaxy. To believe in a universe as young as 6 or 7 thousand years old, is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy, not to mention the light from all the 100 billion other galaxies in the observable universe.

Hell fuckin' yeah. So much win.

"Oh you, don't you know god created the universe with that light already on its way so we could observe those far away galaxies...with our telescopes?"