We can never look into the future. Everything we experience has already happened.
The time it takes light to reach our eye means that everything we see is in the past. The farther away it is, the more in the past it is. Take looking into the cosmos, as we peer further and further into deep space we see farther back in time; closer and closer to the Big Bang. The light of those stars we see at night is in some cases millions of years old. Those star may have burnt out and the planets annihilated themselves, but because we look into their history we see what they were, many many years ago. To them we might just be slime mould crawling out of the proverbial primordial mud puddle of life. It’s all Carl ‘Sagany’ stuff. but the thought of looking into the past of the universe. makes you feel really really fantastically small.
You decide to take your dog for a walk, you are lucky enough to see a Super Nova explode in the dusk sky. What you are seeing is multiple past event. They just happen to arrive at your eyes at the same ‘instant.’ You are seeing a collection of various past events. “You are looking into the whole history of the universe all at once.” Brain melted yet????
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space, listen…” HHG – Douglas Adams
We egotistical monkeys, need to come to grips with the fact, that we are not all that fascinating, smart or pretty to anyone other than ourselves. But what are you going to do? eh! Have another pan galactic gargle blaster and watch some more telly.
Brain Puddle productions 