People are saying that The Pillars Of Creation have been destroyed, and will take 400-500 Million light years to reach us. Can someone explain how do we know it when the light hasn’t reached us?
In: 1444
Firstly, a couple of corrections – the Pillars of Creation are 7,000 light years away, not 400-500 million. And a light year is the distance that light travels in a year, so it is a measurement of distance, not time. So light from the Pillars takes 7,000 years (not light years) to reach us, so when we look at them we see them as they were 7,000 years ago.
So the simple answer to your question is that we don’t know for sure, and we won’t know until the light reaches us. It is only a theory, based on an image taken of a nearby dust cloud that looks like it could be the result of a shockwave from a supernova. If there has been a supernova it could have blown the pillars away as they are just dust and gas floating in space. If this happened, it happened 6,000 years ago, so we will actually see it happen in 1,000 years time.
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