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Philosophy of light - Observable universe.

This is the part 2 of simple truths. To understand light, it is important to know why. If you have read the previous article on simple truths, you would notice, some of these are still present in front of our eyes. Hence mindfulness is essential as we cannot see these truths directly in our vision. With our minds vision or "imagination" we can manipulate physical parameters to do a mental experiment on everyday objects and acquire wisdom it provides. I invite you for a yet another thought journey, like Einstein did, this time to the edge of the universe.


universe
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Observable Universe.

When we learn about astronomy, we learn that the lengths in universe are so massive, measuring by meters, or kilometers is not possible. Hence, we measure distance in light years. Light travels so fast that in a one second it will travel 299,792 kilometers. However, the universe is expanding at a rate, more than this distance for a second at the edge of the observable universe (relative to earth). The concept of the observable universe stems from the finite speed of light and the finite age of the universe. Because the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, we can only see objects whose light has had enough time to reach us since the beginning of the universe. This creates a "horizon" beyond which we cannot observe, not because there isn't more out there, but because their light hasn't had enough time to get to us. This observable limit is what defines the boundaries of what we can detect and study—hence the term "observable universe." It's a product of the interplay between time, distance, and the speed of light.


Now that is good for background knowledge. How can we use these extreme ideas for our mindfulness practice or simply our wisdom?


A thought experiment - Philosophy of light

Imagine you found a way to teleport your friend to the edge of the universe. And he sends you a message. He lights up an infinite torch from the edge of the universe to send you a message. Let's assume this torch is powerful enough to provide light which can travel so far. If your friend is at the edge of the universe, his message would reach us in another 13.8 billion light years(because of the expansion of the universe actual distance this light has travelled would be 46.5 billion light years.


There may be errors in my calculation when other factors are considered. However, as this is just a philosophical argument, this is good enough. More importantly what does this mean?


Philosophy of light

  1. When the space is expanded, we see that apparent fast speed of light is not so fast anymore. It will be generations and generations till the light from your friend reaches the earth. We all would be perished by then.

  2. The light, which is instant, so fast in our scale, carries a significant delay in infinite scale. Only because we are not so fast, we do not observe this delay.

  3. What is true in cosmic scale is true in our scale. How minute it is when you see something, it has already happened!


bee
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Think about what this means philosophically. When you see a buzzing bee land on a flower, it is something which already happened! What we see and identify as now, is something which happened in the past. Really speaking we can never see what is happening Now. So, what do we do when we ask someone to live mindfully or live for the moment? When we truly cannot achieve this reality.


For me living mindfully is being aware of these simple truths. Identifying flaws in our perceptions in this relatively true world.


If you would like to see the same problem in a different viewpoint, I would ask you to imagine quicksilver.


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