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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Okay so, it’s common for people to talk about distant stars as appearing one way because the light takes (mi|bi)illions of years to get to us, and that makes perfect sense to me… But when they go on to say that, for instance, Betelgeuse has already gone supernova but we won’t see it until the light gets to us…

    According to the principle of the relativity of simultaneity, since the speed of light is the speed of causality, wouldn’t it be a bit more accurate (though definitely more confusing to the public) to say that the stars actually are as we observe them, but that the star is far enough away that traveling to it, even instantly, would basically require significant time travel forward? I guess it would just be a different way to talk about “the present” in relativistic terms, which is only difficult because our languages never evolved to handle the concept.

    What you think?