RE: what science comes easy to you if any?
February 5, 2013 at 12:52 pm
(This post was last modified: February 5, 2013 at 12:53 pm by Cyberman.)
Well, it's true that looking out into space is looking back in time. You need to get quite far out for any appreciable effect, but in all cases the objects we see aren't actually there; we're looking at where they were when the light received by our eyes and other instruments was emitted or reflected, as the case may be, and in many cases as you say may not even exist anymore. Take Barnard's Star, for instance. It's the nearest star with the greatest proper motion (10.3 arcseconds per year), that is we can measure its actual movement through space as opposed to its apparent (relative) movement as a result of our own motion. By the time our instruments have picked up its light, the star itself has already moved further enough along that if you were to point at where it appears to be, you would in effect be pointing at nothing.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
