They say that when we look up to see stars, we’re actually seeing the light from dead stars. So technically, we can’t see what’s out there in the present? What do you think is out there now? is it just new, modern stars or we don’t get to see anything at all? (since by now, everything has expanded billions of miles apart from each other that light is far from anything to reach)
In: Planetary Science
What “they’re” saying is largely wrong.
We’re seeing light from the past because light takes time to travel to us from where it is. but the star is almost certainly still there. We pretty much exclusively see with our eyes only stars in our own galaxy which are at most 100,000-150,000 light years away. Stars typically live for millions of years and can even live up to trillions.
What does “now” even mean if you’re talking about a point in space that is so far away that any hint of its existence won’t be “here” until long after humanity is gone. There is no meaningful relationship in space or time between us and such a place. That is, it isn’t sensible to assign a word constrained by our idea of reality to something so far beyond it.
The vast majority of stars that you can see with the naked eye are actually relatively close, within a couple of thousand light-years. There’s still plenty of room for some of them to be alive and kicking.
As for what’s alive out there now? Odds are, more of the same. More stars, new stars, stellar remnants.
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