Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder Where You Are

By Ren Carter

Feb. 9, 2004

A star we see in the night time sky is a reality long since past.

My friend Maria and I were having a physics discussion the other day. She asked if I thought the earth was a living being that could think and reason just like humans do.

It seemed a bit of stretch to answer yes, so I said, “I don’t know.” 

Then she said, “You know if it could, it may decide to go somewhere else and get lost with us on it, then what would become of us?”

            I said, “The only reason why it’s not lost now is because it has company----the sun and the other planets near-by in a large galactic neighborhood called the Milky Way.”  I further explained we could suppose that a planet much like ours may exist without neighbors, but it wouldn’t be able to sustain the likes of beings like ourselves.

Such an earthlike planet could spend its whole lifetime unaware of itself because of nobody around to see it or other planets to provide gravitational influence. Kind of lonely for such planets I thought.  Maria and I agreed that fortunately for us, while we’ve been here, earth has remained in a very fine location for both ourselves and itself.  After finishing my conversation with Maria, I continued to think about this perplexing question of earthly consciousness and it being parked in a supportive location for us.

They say in the real estate business that location is the primary drive behind the value of property, but I don’t think Earth decides what part of itself is most valuable, we do! This is done by evaluating property according to its accessibility, utility, and history.           

Obviously mankind plays a large role in the earth’s interactions with us. Earth gives so freely to us, but we’re the ones who make it expensive. The earth provides a free lunch for all and we decide between ourselves who gets the larger portions. Many think this is done unfairly and this may be so, but as we all know the earth often has its say by violently expressing itself through what the insurance and real estate business call “acts of God”. 

There is no question about it, lots of acting is going on, but we’re doing most of it. I’ve often jested that God must be an awful guy because whenever the earth expresses itself (to our chagrin), we think it’s His fault.  It makes me feel bad that God is so maligned.

We humans are in an interesting fix while living because we’re so attached and dependant on the earth for our sustenance. Many, like me, while trying to survive, are also attempting to figure things out and trying to make sense of our highly complex existence. This is why I like to read physics books and have discussions with people like Maria and others to examine the mysteries of life.

 One such mystery is known in the world of physics as look back time.  This pertains to the speed of light which is one hundred and eighty-six thousand, two hundred miles per second. One way to picture this is to know that the sun is estimated to be about ninety-three million miles away from the earth. Simple arithmetic shows that it takes about eight and a half minutes for light to reach us from the sun. This means that before light reaches us from the sun it ages more than eight minutes.

 As we know, light on the earth with the passing of time, fades into darkness. Conversely in outer space, light does not fade. In fact light appears to illuminate the far reaches of space indefinitely. This is why we’re able to see so many stars in the night sky. While it only takes eight minutes for the light to reach us from the sun, it could take thousands of light years for the light from the stars to reach us.  The light from the stars never fade, but does this mean that when we observe a star, we’re actually seeing a real physical object? May be or may be not. We know by seeing a star’s light that it existed sometime in the past, possibly so long ago, it doesn’t exist any more.  

While looking into the starry night with your loved one on the front porch, you realize you’re looking into the past and the only thing that is in the present is you, your loved one and the immediate surroundings.  Even with very powerful telescopes that can see galaxies away, we are still looking at the past. 

If our spaceships were able to get us to a star 1,000 light years away, would we be able to land there?  Would it still exist?  We know the porch is real because we can touch it and feel it.  It exists for us right now as we look at it.  With a star it isn’t so straightforward.  A real estate huckster could make a lot of money selling stars in the sky never worrying if they are still there or not.  His most convincing line would be, “See it right there in the sky?  Of course it is real, you can see it can’t you?”

Like the movie being played at the cinema, the film records what was before it at one time, but if you were go to the movie studio today, you may not see what is on the film at all.  The same is true of the light from the stars.  It is showing us a movie of what once existed. 

At what point in time and space does the light we see cease being history and start being our reality?  This is a difficult question to answer.  The answer may lie in the fact that the universe is thermodynamic. Reality is on the leading edge of a reaction between the past and the future.  The only thing we can interact with is the now.  If we cannot conceivably access it to interact with it, it is not part of The Now. 

Mars is part of our now because The Spirit and The Rover are sending us pictures from it and someday it is conceivable that man will walk on Mars.  It is remotely conceivable that we could reach any place within our solar system.  Outside of it, however, the likelihood lessens and it becomes part of the past to us.  Someday a mathematician will likely calculate at exactly what point in space-time that point of Now is.  Just like we have an International Time Date Meridian on earth, someday we will have a Universal Time Meridian coordinate in space. 

Just as property becomes a real value to a prospective buyer when its history provides him with accessibility and utility, the universe may do the same when we can access and use it as well as observe its history during a romantic starry night on the front porch.   

See also