been reading a lot of conversations about space since the james webb images were released particularly wrt to light speed and the fact that we are technically “looking into the past” because the light that actually reaches us is millions or billions of years old, and so we only see these places as they were when the light left, not as they are right now. cool & fine & very interesting
but i just saw someone (shoutout sylverthewordsmyth in the tiktok comment section) reframe this as “the future can see us” and despite this being a natural and logical extrapolation from us seeing the past, it has shaken me to my core. if there’s anybody to look at us from far away, millions and billions of years in the future, they would look at us and see… us. they would look and see the same planet we live on right now, with the same continents and oceans. and it will be already long gone but to them it will be as alive as it is to us right now, the same way we see still see stars that have already gone out. i have to lay down