January 7, 2015: Pillars of Creation II

Clodfobble · 01-10-2015, 05:24 PM

Obviously I get how the light of their destruction hasn't reached us yet and we're looking 7,000 years into the past and all that... but how do we actually know that they were destroyed 6,000 years ago? The article just says that we've known it since 2007, and that "with our telescopes" we can... somehow see something different than what we can see? Which makes no sense, our telescopes are here where we are. Hubble is less than 350 miles up from the Earth's surface, which is nothing when you're talking about distances in light years.

My brain keeps trying to come up with some way we could know the base fact that the nearby supernova happened, and we know how big supernovas are thus we can assume we will see the Pillars get destroyed eventually, but it's not like we could detect a front wave of radiation or something else from the supernova that moves faster than light, because nothing moves faster than light.

Answers plz.

01-10-2015, 05:24 PM	#14
Clodfobble UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 20,012	Obviously I get how the light of their destruction hasn't reached us yet and we're looking 7,000 years into the past and all that... but how do we actually know that they were destroyed 6,000 years ago? The article just says that we've known it since 2007, and that "with our telescopes" we can... somehow see something different than what we can see? Which makes no sense, our telescopes are here where we are. Hubble is less than 350 miles up from the Earth's surface, which is nothing when you're talking about distances in light years. My brain keeps trying to come up with some way we could know the base fact that the nearby supernova happened, and we know how big supernovas are thus we can assume we will see the Pillars get destroyed eventually, but it's not like we could detect a front wave of radiation or something else from the supernova that moves faster than light, because nothing moves faster than light. Answers plz. __________________ My book My other book My spirit animal

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