• Ergologia@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Go outside and look up. Someone with a large enough telescope can look down and see you. In 8 mins, someone with a large enough telescope who is the same distance away from the Earth as the Sun is can look down and see you look up due to the time it takes light, as photons, to travel through space. In a couple hours, someone from way outside the solar system with a large enough telescope can collect enough photons to see you look up. In a few years, someone with a large enough telescope can see you look up from nearby exoplanets. As you go farther and farther out from the Solar System someone from the further and further in the future could, in principle, see you going outside and looking up if they had a large enough telescope and could collect enough photons. Those photons will travel forever through space, unless they hit something. Because of the expansion of the universe, some photons will never hit anything. Some photons that bounce off your iris, will be trapped in their own voids of the universe for eternity as space expands in front of them faster than they move. But, in theory, if someone could travel faster than light, they could collect those photons and see you looking up that day an eternity ago and that will be true forever. Does that make the event of you going outside and looking up significant? That’s a judgement for the living and conscious to make.