A science piss and moan!

I know it is hard to believe that I am going to bitch about something that is not related to games, beer, or smokes but, I have an issue with some things.

As I have gotten older, I tend to watch the Discovery, Sceince, History Channel, etc.. a lot more. In doing so, there are some things that I take a little bit of issue with. I won't get into them all right now. Maybe you science buffs can help me out here.

As I understand, when anyone on earth looks out of a telescope, the further you see out in space, the older it is. I almost bought that til I started thinking the earth is round! So, no matter where I am on earth, the deeper I see in space the older it is. Here is the thing, what if that only works when you are looking out from Greenland in July? I am thinking that if you look in space from any point on earth and it gets older, we are assuming we are the center of the universe again. I don't think this can be right!

We used to think that the sun rotated around us and that the earth is flat. Is it a possibility that, given the big bang theory is true, there are other worlds out there that are more advanced that us asking why we are so behind?

Who's to say there isn't a galaxy close to us that wasn't there before we were? I know I am on a rant and some of this may not make sense but, I will correct it if someone replies with a problem

well, i think what you might be talking about is something slightly different.

although light travels extremely quickly in a vacuum (299792458m/s) this is nothing compared to the size of the universe (bigger than hiv's fat ass ive been told...)

so when we view the heavens the stars we see are awesome distances from us (hence units like light year (9.4605284 × 10^15 metres) and parsec (3.08568025 × 10^16 metres))

due to this the light has taken a very long time to get here.

therefore we are viewing things that happend an extremely long time ago. many stars we can see at night no longer even exist

poor stars

/me sobs

perhaps this wasnt what you are talking about, but im a lazy bastard and only skim read your post :P (i know you mentioned some slightly different things (age of universe etc) but perhaps you slightly misunderstood what they meant - the science behind the age of the universe is extremely good and non-physicists like us are in no place to question it )

but this does explain why the futher away a star is (or was), the older WHAT YOU SEE is.

It doesn´t actually "get older" NXS, the light only needs considerably more time to travel from the stars to you eye, or, to put it in your example, from earth´s sunray reflection to some alien´s eyes. So if we were roundabout 4 billion years in the future and you were an alien, there´s a slight chance that you would see earth in it´s state of today, although it may already been blown up by a nova or something.

Originally posted by GreatCthulhu@Mar 18 2007, 02:33 PM
It doesn´t actually "get older" NXS, the light only needs considerably more time to travel from the stars to you eye, or, to put it in your example, from earth´s sunray reflection to some alien´s eyes. So if we were roundabout 4 billion years in the future and you were an alien, there´s a slight chance that you would see earth in it´s state of today, although it may already been blown up by a nova or something.

READ THE POSTS IN THE THREAD BEFORE YOU WRITE *(*$(£*!

you just repeated what i said (without the sexy numbers)

i still love you all though! im just grumpy when people ignore me

you can apply time into rzk's post by saying that teh lighter a star is the older it is, or deader it is.

and this wasnt really a rant, it was more like a.... .Philosophizing

Even I can't bitch all the time

I'm with rzk on this one. This is why there is the theory that if you
can travel faster than the speed of light you could actually arrive
back on earth and be younger than your children. Or something
like that :-)

Well, I do believe when scientists say that, they are only referring to the time it takes for the light to reach earth. It's not that the star or the planets around it are older than earth. It just takes a long time for us to see it. So, I agree with rzk.