The Sun could already be gone — you'd have no idea.
The Sun could already be gone, and you'd have absolutely no idea. Not for another eight minutes, anyway. Light travels at around 300,000 kilometres per second — nothing in the universe moves faster — yet it still takes about eight minutes and twenty seconds to cross the 150 million kilometres between the Sun and Earth. So the sunlight hitting your eyes right now left the Sun before you last checked your phone. You're not seeing the Sun as it is. You're seeing a portrait of it from eight minutes ago. And that's our nearest star. From Proxima Centauri, the next one along, light takes over four years to arrive. Every star you see at night is a version of itself from the past — some ancient, some recent. The universe doesn't show you now. It only ever shows you then. Follow Deep Field Vault for more of the universe's stranger truths.