@Alientcp said in #9:
> Might have already even happened, we just have not been updated.
True! It might have happened 599 years ago (assuming the distance to Betelgeuse to be 600 light years). Thus is the nature of the finite speed of light. The starlight that's detected by our eyes shows those stars not as they are now but as they were hundreds (or thousands) of years ago (for stars visible to the naked eye). Just like your ears don't detect the aeroplane flying overhead as it is located now but as it was located a few seconds ago. How many seconds? Altitude-divided-by-the-speed-of-sound seconds ago.
Under the darkest skies even some galaxies can be seen with the naked eye, so you're looking several million years back in time:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_galaxies#Naked-eye_galaxiesI'm sure most of you already know this, but it bears repeating: Using telescopes you can even see objects so unfathomably distant that they appear as they were billions of years ago, way before our planet had even formed!
These objects (quasars for instance) emitted light 10 billion years ago and 5 billion years later – while that light was in transit – our solar system and our planet formed from an amorphous cloud of gas and dust, the debris of a prior generation of stars that lived in this corner of our Milky Way.
And five billion years later there are strange beings inhabiting this world who grind shiny metals in such a way that they reflect light. And their planet is now in the way of that ancient light, absorbing some of it. Just this tiny area of this planet, these few square meters are covered with ground and polished silver, formed into the shape of a spherical shell, referred to by the locals as a "mirror". And from these few square meters the ancient light reflects.
It interacts with matter perhaps for the very first time in billions of years!
And is focussed onto CCD detectors where it excites electrons from the valence band of the semiconductor to the conduction band, creating electron-hole pairs that can then be trapped in potential wells and electrically read out minutes later. Creating an image of that old, old galaxy (or quasar therein). Showing it as it was twice as long ago as the age of the Earth!
That's amazing! Less amazing when you realise that the light is emitted (nearly) equally in all directions and our direction wasn't anything special – but still amazing :-)
It means that there probably are – might be – other beings on other recently formed worlds, off in a different direction from the quasar, carving their markings into rock and soon after grinding their metals into mirrors. And they see the other side of it! And will never ever see us nor vice-versa! But we both marvel at the poetically named QSO 2237+0305
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_Cross"Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers, you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age." – Richard Feynman
