The finite speed of light is well known and experimental evidence has defined the speed in meters per second to great accuracy, just ask Google.
The finite speed of light has led people to believe that distant objects are observed as they were in the past, because light travels at a finite speed it is obvious right?
(i.e we observe the Sun as it appeared about 10 minutes ago)
It seemes to me, scientists have missed or ignored the other solution, namely that everyting we see is occurrring NOW, and that objects in the distance are now in our future.
Does anyone wish to comment on this?
Consider a luminous astronomical object "X" which is at a distance of one light year from the earth. Then light signal from "X" detected by an observatory on earth today has originated one year ago in "X" which is in the past. Similarly a light signal generated on "X" today will be detected by an observatory on earth one year later; which is in the future.
@ BB
This is only the case if time is a scalar, If on the other hand time is absolute then it is not necessarily the case. In absolute time it is more likely that equal time is observed in the present. We simply do not know with certainty if time is a scalar, personally I am leaning towards absolute time.
The question of weather time is open ended or finite is of the utmost importance, for answering todays difficult questions in physics. Scalar or open ended time give different results to some experiments than absolute time which has a definite beginning and end.
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