I saw a post on reddit saying NASA has a telescope that is able to see the creation of planets and stars from 13 billion years ago. How can that work?
Link to post: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ke2p2r/nasa_is_about_to_launch_a_telescope_that_can/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
In: Physics
Speed of light = 299,792,458 m / s OR 670,616,629 mph
So a light year is how far that light can travel in a year’s worth of time
1 light-year = 5,879,000,000,000 miles
So if we observe something realllyyyyy really far away, say 5,879,000,000,000 miles away from us we are actually seeing what state it was in one year ago because the light took that long to get to us to inform us of what was happening.
Think of it as an old time letter you would have grandma send from the mailbox. She wrote it December 1st, but by the time it got to her sister across the country it was now December 15th. Her sister sees it for the first time and reads it for the first time on the 15th but all of the events it talks about and tells the tales of happened on December first.
So take that same concept now multiply the distance that light has to travel to get to us by a BILLION times. That’s how we can see what happened 13 billion years ago. Those objects are actually 5,879,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 13 miles away from us 🤣🤣🤣 and it took that long for that light to make it all the way here.
Kind of incredible huh?
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