Did you know that when you look into the sky, you’re seeing the universe as it was and not as it is? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. So, if a star that you see in the night sky is trillions of miles away, it may have already burned out long ago. The closest star after the sun is 24 trillion miles away, which would take light 4 years to travel. This means that we are seeing that star as it appeared four years ago and not as it appears in the present. Likewise, the sun is about 93 million miles away, which would take light 8 minutes to travel. So, if the sun suddenly burned out, we would continue to see it for 8 minutes, and then we would witness it burn out, 8 minutes after the fact. This means that we are seeing stars as they appeared in 1803, or even as their last light left them while dinosaurs were roaming the earth 100 million years ago. The universe is a map of the past and our eyes are our own personal time machines. Pretty cool.
On a side note, space scares the shit out of me.
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