If the stars we see are light from millions of light years away and they see our Sun’s light the same, is the whole universe “existing” in the same time?

Question

Hi all, I didn’t know how to formulate the question in a non stupid way so I’ll explain.

If the light we see from stars in the sky are actually “the past” as they’ve left their source light years ago, from another point in the universe another planet sees our Sun’s light the same way, correct?

If that’s the case, if there was an “universal year” or an “Universe’s current year”, would all the stars and planets be living in the same year?

Maybe I am 5, I feel 5 right now.

Thanks 🙂

In: 466

Answer 1

Best way I can think of explaining it like this. Tom and Jane are living in different parts of the world. Tom sends a letter to Jane, that says, I’m having pizza for lunch! The letter takes a week to arrive through snail mail.

When Jane receives the letter, she is now informed, that Tom is having pizza for lunch. But she knows that this was a week ago, because that’s how long the letter takes to gets delivered. Tom could be having something else for lunch at the present moment, but she will never know what he is having at the exact time she is, because information via mail will always take a week to arrive.

The letter in this example is light. The speed of the letter being sent is light speed. Tom and Jane can be sending letters to each other, but they will always only know what the other person was doing a week ago in real time. But the present time passes universally for both of them.