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First images from Euclid are in

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1413 points mooreds | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 20:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.237s | source
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lefrenchy ◴[22 Oct 24 02:20 UTC] No.41910562[source]▶
It's just so crazy to me to see a galaxy 420 million light years away. That is so much time for what we're seeing to have changed. I presume life can form within that window given the right conditions, so to some degree it just feels a bit sad that the distance is so great that we can't actually see what may exist in this moment that far away
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gary_0 ◴[22 Oct 24 06:44 UTC] No.41911815[source]▶
Given that the speed of light is the speed of causality, technically it's not really 420 million years in the "past" in any meaningful sense. The present is relative, not universal. The collected light we see in our telescopes is a lie about a particular universe that will never be, at least in any tangible way. On a cosmic scale, every spot in the universe sees its own unique sequence of events going on around it, all of it rendered virtually immutable by the relative slowness of c.

It's a beautiful nightmare, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

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1. codethief ◴[22 Oct 24 11:36 UTC] No.41913283[source]▶
> Given that the speed of light is the speed of causality, technically it's not really 420 million years in the "past" in any meaningful sense.

Yes, it is. It is 420 million years in the past in our frame of reference. The link you posted is about how frames of reference of other observers might differ from ours. However, doesn't make the notion "420 million years in the past [in our frame of reference]" any less well-defined.