What we see?

First, The process of seeing

1. Light Source: Objects that we see reflect or emit light. For example, the Sun emits light, and other objects, like a book or a tree, reflect the light that falls on them.

2. Light Rays: When light from an object travels through space, it moves in the form of rays. These rays of light contain information about the object's color, shape, and texture.

3. Entering the Eye: The first step in seeing an object is for these rays of light to enter our eyes through the cornea, which is the clear front surface of the eye.

Once the rays enter our eyes, we see the objects. There is more to it like, how the light travels from cornea to our brain but let me finish today at this point. If you want to know how the eyes works to make the ray reach our brain, I will post another article about it, you just need to comment.

So, for all this process to take place, it takes some time. And the time it takes for light to travel from an object to our eyes and for us to see that object depends on the distance between the object and our eyes, as well as the speed of light.

The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second (or about 186,282 miles per second). This speed is incredibly fast, and light can travel around the Earth about 7.5 times in just one second.

So, if you're looking at an object that is relatively close, like a person standing a few meters away from you, the time it takes for light from that person to reach your eyes and for you to see them is almost instantaneous. It's a tiny fraction of a second.

However, if you're looking at something much farther away, like a star in the night sky, the time it takes for the light from that star to reach your eyes can be much longer.

For example, the light from the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, takes approximately 4.22 years to reach us. This means that when you look at Proxima Centauri in the night sky, you are actually seeing the star as it appeared over four years ago, not as it is right now.

In summary, the time it takes for light to reach us and for us to see objects depends on the distance to those objects and the speed of light. For nearby objects, it's virtually instantaneous, while for objects that are very far away, there can be a significant delay in what we see compared to when the light actually left the object.

Now, what I am trying to say is that, we do not see the present. What we are seeing is something that happened in the past. For example take Proxima Centauri, we can never see what is happening at Proxima Centauri but what happened there 4 years ago. Even something like bus we see every day, we see it as it was in the past. Not so very much in the past but the time it takes for rays to enter our eyes from the bus. Don't you find this amazing that we are seeing not the present but the past? Well, Thanks for reading. Keep following and keep the comments flowing.