Saturday, November 27, 2010

A Sunbeam! A Sunbeam!

A sunbeam setting out through space at the rate of 186,000 miles a second would go in a gigantic circle and return to its origins after about 200 billion years.

2 comments:

  1. Always a bit of the heebie-jeebies thinking about stuff like that!

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  2. And the light would go in a circle because... (thinking) the universe is shaped like a big funnel? I'm trying to remember the diagrams in Steven Hawkings book!) This is too much for my pea-brain!

    BUT at distances like those in our own galaxy, the circularity of light must not be measurable. Otherwise a lot of our calculations about the stars would really be messed up. Right?

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