Random Thoughts...

Preface: (In no way will this blog post help you in business or life, it is literally just random thoughts. Don't read this post if you don't want to waste your time.)

My friend Mike Nyfeler just gave me a cd with some music he thought I should listen to. I put the cd in, opened the tracks up in iTunes and started listening to an artist M83. AMAZING!!! I love how fluid and melodic they sound. I get interested in the actual artist name (M83), interesting...

Curiosity gets the best of me and I have to research what it means. I went to google and typed in M83 and clicked on the wikipedia link. This link gives a description about this band...ah ha, there is a link to what the band is named after, so I click on it. When I click on this link it takes me to the galaxy Messier 83.

I start reading about this galaxy and it says that it is 15 Million light years (measurement of time) away...uhhhhhhh....What? My mind can grasp the greatness of that distance so I need to do some figuring. I look up on google for the speed of light, it turns out that the speed of light is about 670,616,629.2 miles per hour (measurement of distance) or 983,571,056 feet per second. I still can't wrap my mind around this, so I need something relative to compare it to.

I think of how far it is around the earth, so.......I google it. I find that the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,902 mi / 40,076 km. Some simple math is required to figure this out:

How many times could we go around the earth in one light year?
(Speed of Light) 670,616,629.2 miles per hour
x (The number of hours in a year) 8,765.81277 hours
= (The total Number of miles in light year) 5,878,499,812,015.72
/ (divided by) (the circumference of the earth) 24,902 miles
= (The total # of time we could go around the earth in 1 light year) 236,065,368.726
x (light years to the galaxy M83) 15,000,000
= (The total # of times we could go around the earth in 15,000,000 light years) 3,540,980,530,890,520
= WOW!

Now the thought occurs to me that this galaxy technically could be completely gone by now, blown up, imploded, whatever, and we would have no idea.
Because the only way we can see this galaxy is by the LIGHT it puts off. So as long as the destruction of this galaxy didn't happen over 15 million years ago, we will still be able to see it. But if the galaxies implosion (or whatever) happened 15 million years ago tomorrow, it would disappear out of the sky tomorrow.

That is freaking confusing and trippy. I hope this pointless post lived up to your expectations.
~Chais