Thread: Something to think about A CANUMDRUM

The speed of light is 299 792 km per second. Now The Earth Sun's light takes nearly eight minutes to reach Earth. So ..................If somebody switches the Sun's light off, it will take us eight minutes to discover that the light has gone out.

The next nearest star is about 8 000 light years away from The Earth's Solar System. So it will take us 8000 years to find out that, the light of the star/sun has been switched off. The other stars are even futher away, some of them million's of light years away.

Thus we can conclude that if the light has been switched off, that except for our sun, we could be living in total darkness in this moment of time.

Even though we can see the old light that is still travelling towards us. The source of this light, IE : The stars may no longer be there, are we living in darkness?

Something to think about.......

Originally Posted by SYRON

The speed of light is 299 792 km per second. Now The Earth Sun's light takes nearly eight minutes to reach Earth. So ..................If somebody switches the Sun's light off, it will take us eight minutes to discover that the light has gone out.

The next nearest star is about 8 000 light years away from The Earth's Solar System. So it will take us 8000 years to find out that, the light of the star/sun has been switched off. The other stars are even futher away, some of them million's of light years away.

Thus we can conclude that if the light has been switched off, that except for our sun, we could be living in total darkness in this moment of time.

Even though we can see the old light that is still travelling towards us. The source of this light, IE : The stars may no longer be there, are we living in darkness?

Something to think about.......

that's creepy.

sweet dreams, sleep tight, hope the bugs don't bite

really, is there a way to determine if a given star has really died and we just haven't seen the end of all the photons it's emitted?

Originally Posted by Chemboy

really, is there a way to determine if a given star has really died and we just haven't seen the end of all the photons it's emitted?

No. There's no method of detecting anything at speeds greater than c.

Originally Posted by SYRON

The speed of light is 299 792 km per second. Now The Earth Sun's light takes nearly eight minutes to reach Earth. So ..................If somebody switches the Sun's light off, it will take us eight minutes to discover that the light has gone out.

The next nearest star is about 8 000 light years away from The Earth's Solar System. So it will take us 8000 years to find out that, the light of the star/sun has been switched off. The other stars are even futher away, some of them million's of light years away.

Thus we can conclude that if the light has been switched off, that except for our sun, we could be living in total darkness in this moment of time.

Even though we can see the old light that is still travelling towards us. The source of this light, IE : The stars may no longer be there, are we living in darkness?

Something to think about.......

Not really. We wouldn't be in darkness in the daytime is the Sun is still shining, nor would we be in darnkess at night (ignoring the Moon for the moment) until the last of the starlight reached us. And the stars are at such great and varying distances that it would take thousands and thousands for them all to wink out. No living in darkness here. :wink:

an interesting consequence of this is the following : say we received a message from an alien civilisation about 1000 lightyears away - would there be any point replying ? they might no longer be there, or by the time they reply and we receive the reply, we might not