Quote:
Originally posted by nanook
another good and unfathomable factazoid.
while i have you here mikey........here's one i've always wondered about that pertains to your comment.
let's say a ray of light from a star, about 1 million years ago, streams through the universe to reach the lens of your or my eyes.
let's say that once it has travelled and that light has reached our vision, why does it continue to shine?
i figure that 1 million years ago, (the point in the past in which this star actually resides) the star might actually be burnt out, by the time it took for that one ray to reach us, 1 million light years (in the future).
do you get what i'm saying?????
how many times does the rays from this star actually travel that 1 million light years. and why do we still continue to see it.
say like the constellations.
will they eventually cease to shine in the sky.
or does this "ray", from head to tail, sort to speak, span the entire distance of 1 million years, and we continue to see that entire ray.
is the ray actually, 1 million light years in length, as well?
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Just to confuse you a little more here's a few facts
Light rays aren't rays, they are particles called photons, so what you're seeing is a bunch of photons that left the star a million years ago.
Why does it continue to shine, cause it's still putting out those little photons for everyone to make a wish on.
So if the star burns out, say today, we'll find it out a million years from now
As for burning out, yup, they will, stars are a big thermonuclear explosion that just happens to have enough boom to keep going for billions of years; But, sooner or later they'll go out with a bang, [Nova], a big bang [Super Nova] and leave a little thing called a white or brown dwarf, or maybe a black hole.
But seeing as how I'm a member of the Flat Earth Society I think it all been made up.
