Understanding Light Years and Astronomy

This is the Hubble Telescope, and this is where your brain is gonna melt, but I'm

gonna help you.

All right.

Right? Just last year they said they found a

galaxy with inhabitable planets

13.4 billion

light years away.

Yes.

Do you know what a, a light year is? The light distance travels in a year,

right?

In a year, yes.

The distance light travels in a year.

It's 1,186,000 miles a second or something stupid.

Okay? So

13.4 billion light years. So let's just look at one light year,

not 13.4

billion, just one. Not one billion, one light year is

5.8 trillion miles.

Do you know how long one trillion seconds is by any chance?

One trillion seconds?

Yeah, about.

Probably longer than we live.

Yeah, 31,000 years. Okay? So that's how big one

trillion is. So it's 5.8 trillion miles away.

The moon is 237,000 miles away. So

one light year

is 24.8 million times farther than the moon. Stick with me.

You can handle this.

Okay. I'm following. I'm following.

24.8 million times farther than the moon.

That's one light year, okay?

Now you gotta take this 24.8 million times farther than the moon

and multiply it by 13.4 billion.

Okay.

And we can zoom in and see a planet there, but we can't zoom in and see the moon

lander?

Well, I, I think the way... So

the way they explained that they're finding this

is not by zooming

in, but rather that the light from

there travels to us. We're just seeing it now-

... but because the light, it, it travels-

Fuck

... yeah, forever

in space.

No, that, that's a, that... I, I used to-

Yeah, that's, that's how they put-

I used to love that story, but think about this.

Do you know what the inverse square law of light is?

'Cause they didn't teach you that in school, so the day you skipped,

they didn't,

they, you didn't, they didn't learn it that day.

Light spreads out.

Like, if you hold a flashlight in your face,

it's really bright.

But move it 10 feet away, not so bright anymore.

Move it farther away, and the light spreads.

Every time you double the distance to a light, it's a quarter of the brightness.

Right.

Like, that light spread out like, like, like, if you had a balloon,

uh-

Yeah

... and you put a little air in it, that rubber,

let's just say that's the light,

and I blow it up to a foot in diameter, in circumference, whatever,

that rubber is now thinner. If I blew it up to 10 feet, that rubber

is gonna be

really thin. If I blew it up to 100 miles, could you even

see the rubber? That's the light, right? The light spreads out.

It's doesn't focus and burn through space for billions

of years and then hit your eyes and go, "Oh, I see that star." Right?

Well, but that's how, that's how they're saying

that it does because-

Yeah, but that's just them saying it, but science proves that that's

not true.

But, yeah-

Science proves that that's not true