Did you know that the farther away something is, the younger it looks? I'm talking on a galactic scale. We see light, and light takes time to get from what we're looking at to our eyes! When we use telescopes to look at things way, way far away in space, we are seeing light that has traveled a very long time to reach us. That means, we're looking back in time! This project shows how we can never see what's happening right this second in places that are really, really far away. In this example, there's a monkey (the observer) in a forest of colorful trees. Imagine that all of the trees were planted at the same time and are now all fully grown. Drag the monkey around and see how the trees only appear fully grown when they're close to you. The further away the tree, the longer the light took to reach the you, so he's seeing younger trees farther away and full grown trees near by. But, in truth, all the trees are the same age! Just like all of the objects in our universe. The farther away we look, the earlier in time we can see!
Concept inspiration from Max Tegmark's book "Our Mathematical Universe". Tree from adamasbruce "growth animation" clip on YouTube.
