Things in space being “xxxx lightyears away”, therefore light from the object would take “xxxx years to reach us on earth”

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I don’t really understand it, could someone explain in basic terms?

Are we saying if a star is 120 million lightyears away, light from the star would take 120 million years to reach us? Meaning from the pov of time on earth, the light left the star when the earth was still in its Cretaceous period?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Yep. The really mindblowing thing is that we can never see anything – ever – truly in the present. Even someone only inches away from you could (hypothetically) no longer really be there, because you’re seeing the light that bounced off of them and landed on your retinas. In that light’s travel time, they could have been whisked off by aliens (or something).

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