Memories & Fictions
Looking outwards at the sky – we essentially stare at things as they were in the past. Sun’s light takes almost 8.5 minutes to travel to Earth, so we see the Sun as it appeared 8.5 minutes ago. The nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away, so it appears to our eyes as it was 4.2 years ago. The nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away and looks the way it did when our hominid ancestors walked the planet. Something similar happens when we look inwards. We remember things not as they were but as we want