RDFRS US:
The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
It took the "light" from this event 13.14 billion years to reach us. 13.14 billion light-years away. Unless I'm making silly math errors (like I often impatiently did in college), that's (9.4605284 × 10^15) x (13.14 x 10^9) meters away, or 1.24311343 × 10^26 meters, or 1.24311343 × 10^23 kilometers, or 7.72434874 × 10^22 miles away.
77,243,487,400,000,000,000,000 miles away, and we see it here on Earth today as it was 13,140,000,000 years ago.
So, by now, whatever galaxy that star is part of could be teeming with intelligent civilizations, and all the galaxies along that unthinkably long line of intervening space could be as well, and we would never know it. Could never know it. And if allowed an overly-simplistic three-dimensional imagination here for a moment, that's only a straight-line radius. Translate it to an impossibly vast circular volume, consider the possible stars and galaxies contained therein, and my head really starts to hurt.
Staggering indeed.
Permalink Wed, 25 May 2011 19:34:05 UTC | #630869