I’m not sure if I worded my question correctly, but let me try to explain more.
If we use a giant telescope to look at another planet 10 light years away from us, we would be looking at how it was 10 years ago. The thing I don’t understand is how does light store and also transfer all the information about that planet (or all the “data” that ends up in our eyes) and yet it’s still the fastest thing.
In: 94
It comes down to light is *small*. Photons are much (much much much) smaller than everyday items we interact with, so they can create *very* high resolution pictures. Imagine you’re trying to figure out the shape of an everyday object, and you’re doing that by throwing things at it and seeing how they bounce off.
If you throw bowling balls you’re really not going to learn much…maybe a rough outline, if you’re lucky. Ping-pong balls? Now you can see features down to about a few inches. It turns out the ability to resolve detail is basically the same size as the “ball” you’re throwing at the object. Photon make *extremely* tiny balls, so they can “see” a huge amount of detail. And they come in different colours, so not only do we get boundaries and brightness (vaguely equivalent to black and white) but we also get colour.
Light is also very fast, which makes it good for transmitting data fast (like in fiber optics), but that’s not really the same thing as looking at things in at high resolution.
Latest Answers