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[–] 22 points 7 months ago (4 children)

We are translucent to X-rays, but we're also translucent to visible light up to a certain depth, and I can make my fingers glow red with my phone's flashlight! That's so weird.


Also, just look at how far away you can see things (if you can see, if you don't know what it's like imagine like hearing but wit, uh, a wider range?).

How the hell do you know that the sun or the moon or the stars are there?! They're so far but you can still detect them with your eyes (though ideally you wouldn't stare at the sun, but y'know what I mean)


Also it's crazy that the universe is like 13 billion years old according to science, but for me the universe started when I was born (and for everyone else but relative to their date of birth), or even when I started remembering things, so I have to deduce that things happened before I "started experiencing" by looking at their indirect effects, as I wasn't there to live through those things because I didn't exist yet.

There will be people who don't exist yet. Wow.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    What's even crazier to me is that the universe can potentially last trillions of years before its heat death, so it's still very young, relatively speaking. And eventually everything will be so far apart that future beings won't even be able to know that other planets exist in the universe. We just got here early enough to find out.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Perhaps a billion years ago the universe was compact enough that beings in various planets evolved enough to develop travel to other planets. Then the Earth's surface was moltenized from a giant asteroid strike, and all traces of that civilization were vaporized. Then the universe expanded so we can't contact our old friends any more anyway.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    won't even be able to know that other planets exist in the universe

    I don't think gravity radically changes with the expansion of space, at least I haven't heard of that. So presumably local stuff will still be clumped together, including nearby galaxies. It's remote stuff that will drift away.

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