Light years

in the "free entry"- oh yeah, there is free lunch sometimes - there were these introduction of what is a galaxy, milky way, stars, sun etc, things I learnt when I was a kid, and things my dad used to tell me and I felt so amazed and little, you know, when you are a kid, you sometime feel quite big in some silly situations even like having friends whom are just 1 year younger and shorter.

passed by this section - "what is a lightyear?"

I remember one night on a beach in Hong Kong, while you could still see starlights (well, not anymore, the sky is always bright 24 hours now), dad told me "you see those stars, so clear, twinkling, but they are actually years behind us which may not exist anymore." That's impossible I thought, but didn't think dad lied to me, of course then as usual, loving to ask "why" in any circumstances, I asked, "why not?". he answered,"cause the starlights you see now were either from their own combustion, explosion or reflection of light and since it's so so far away in universe from us, it took so long probably billions of years for those lights to travels to us and now, they reach your eyes, since it's so long ago, they may not even exist anymore, we are just seeing their past". I felt damn amazed and a little weired.

Now, standing in front of "A light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers each second. More precisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers." I was thinking a star that I am seeing been traveling lightyears to me and not existing anymore but yet, I am watching it now. and vice versa, in billions of lightyears later, some silly living bastards seeing earth - here I am , right here right now but by that time, we had been all disappeared to no where, ha, into stardust probably. how funny an idea it is! and it definitely made me felt very strange again.