The Light-travel Time Warp

Did you know when you gaze up at the night sky, you're actually looking into the past? It takes light time to travel from distant stars and galaxies to reach us.

This concept is referred to as 'look back time' in cosmology.

For example, the Sun is about 93 million miles away, and light travels about 186,282 miles per second.

If you do the math, you'll find it takes sunlight about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth.

So, you're seeing the Sun as it was 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago.

Similarly, when we observe distant objects millions or billions of light-years away, we're seeing them as they were in the far past.

The Hubble Space Telescope has seen galaxies as they were less than a billion years after the Big Bang – close to 13.8 billion years ago.

Hence, astronomy is a form of time travel where looking farther out equates to looking back in time..