Wednesday, April 12, 2006
A light-minute is the distance light travels in 1 minute.
Pluto, which is the planet farthest out in our solar system is about 5 light-hours away from us. When an astronomer looks at Pluto through his telescope, he is in fact looking 5 hours back in time.
The distance to the star in the Milky Way that is our nearest neighbour is 4 light-years. If you could imagine that at this very moment a stargazer is sitting up there with a powerful telescope pointing at us - He might see 'us' as we look 4 years ago.
But that's only the nearest star. The whole galaxy is 90,000 light-years wide.
The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then.
The Big Bang.
Phosphorescence and all other organisms are made of elements that were once blended together in a star.
...we too are stardust...
-Abstracts from Sophie's World
The world is so beautiful. Life itself is a miracle.
Elyse bitching @ 2:21 AM | comment
