60 Light Years away.

Just last week, I had the opportunity to be on the longest non-stop commercial flight from Singapore to New York (15,332km, 18.5 hrs), can’t say I enjoy long flights, but, since this is a vacation, it does feel different. With some time on hand, I was getting reacquainted with some reading about black holes, event horizon and space travel.

I was certainly fascinated by this topic when I was a young kid. Even before Star Wars came out in 1977, I had been enthralled by movies like 2001: Space Odessey, and of course Star Trek. Space and what is beyond Earth boundaries continues to amaze me and fills me with a continued sense of wonder.

Can we travel faster than the speed of light? Are there other intelligent beings out there? Can we travel back in time? Is the whole Hollywood inspired 'meta-verse' even possible? I don't know, but as for the first question. The simple answer is no. So long as we have mass, it will just take too much energy to make this possible.

How long does it take for sunlight from our sun to get to the earth? About 8.4 minutes.

How long does it take for the light from our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri to reach earth? About 4.3 years.

Imagine playing space-chess with someone from Alpha Centauri. I make a move, the person sees it in 4.3 years, and make a move. I see it only after 8.6 years. A typical chess game is done in about 40 moves, so my game with someone in Alpha Centauri will finish in 344 years, about 10 generations, perhaps less, if future generations continues to have kids at a later and later age :)

The blinking lights from our nearest star neighbour, Alpha Centauri, took 4.3 years to travel to earth. So, when we look up at the star, we are actually looking back in time, 4.3 years ago.

This got me curious. I was born about 60 years ago. Let’s say, at that instance, the light from some distant star started zooming straight towards earth, occasionally bending around black holes, and finally reached earth’s observatory in 2024. 60 light years.

At this moment, if I were to look at a star that is 60 light years away from Earth, I will be looking at that star, at a point in history, 60 years ago, in the year that I was born.? Surreal isn’t it, I am actually looking back in time, looking back in history, albeit, not my history nor the history of earth, but the history of another star, another planet, another world altogether.

And on that same star system, on a habitable planet, at this very moment, an observer there would just be noticing my birth.

So, which star systems are 60 light years away from Earth?

Well, I did google for an answer and from that list, I am guessing, at the time I was born, this star blinked at me.

Epsilon Reticuli

There were a few others around the same distance, but this name sounded more interesting and it even has one known planet orbiting it, a gas giant 1.2x bigger than Jupiter, just not sure if there might be life on that planet though.

You might want to take a peep into the past too, check out which star’s light is shining the year you were born.

At the moment, I am pondering on aliens and space invaders. Not sure about the management and leadership applicability from such a side journey, hence in the gap between articles. But I guess, when you’re retired, curiosity rather than KPI drives and inspires. Only difference is, KPI pays, curiosity perhaps just delays dementia.