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By *ark73XXXMan 35 weeks ago
North Staffs/South Cheshire |
"It’s 624 light years away and may explode in 100,000 years
I’m terrified nah its stared acting up could happen alot sooner"
But it could have blown up 623 years ago and we’d still not know about it |
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"It’s 624 light years away and may explode in 100,000 years
I’m terrified nah its stared acting up could happen alot sooner
But it could have blown up 623 years ago and we’d still not know about it "
Doesn't work like that.
A light year is a distance in travel not time
Or just under 5.9 trillion miles x that by 624 I think we'll be ok for a while yet. |
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Even if it exploded/imploded this very minute we wouldn't live long enough to see the event. At a distance of 624 light years away from Earth we wouldn't live long enough to see it in all its magnificence as it would take 624 years for the light from the flash to reach us.
I remember Sir Patrick Moore getting quite excited about this years ago and explaining what we would actually see, nothing at all. |
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"It’s 624 light years away and may explode in 100,000 years
I’m terrified nah its stared acting up could happen alot sooner
But it could have blown up 623 years ago and we’d still not know about it
Doesn't work like that.
A light year is a distance in travel not time
Or just under 5.9 trillion miles x that by 624 I think we'll be ok for a while yet."
Well a light year is _both_ a distance and a time. It's the distance that light travels in one year, but the alternative way of considering it is that if we look at an object 1 light year away the light from it has taken a year to reach us so we are actually seeing it as it was a year ago. When we look at Betelgeuse we see the light that started towards us 624 years ago, the "present" we see is Betelgeuse 624 years in the past.
So Betelgeuse _could_ have exploded at some time during the last 624 years, it may have already happened, we just don't know about it yet.
The same is true for everything we see in the night skies, the further away things are, the further in the past we see them. What we see is not happening now, it has already happened - years, centuries, millenia, eons ago. The light from the stars is travelling through time, from the distant past to our current day... |
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By (user no longer on site) 35 weeks ago
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"It’s 624 light years away and may explode in 100,000 years
I’m terrified nah its stared acting up could happen alot sooner
But it could have blown up 623 years ago and we’d still not know about it
Doesn't work like that.
A light year is a distance in travel not time
……."
….. isn’t it both? |
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By (user no longer on site) 35 weeks ago
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"Basically it's gonna explode and we're gonna die
Does this mean I don't need to bother getting "summer ready"?
Thank fuck for that. "
You should be summer ready all year around, it's always summer somewhere! Get like a girl guide and be prepared!
;-) |
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