If the sun were to cease to shine at this very
moment, it would not affect things on earth at the
present time because they would be in the elsewhere
of the event when the sun went out. We would know
about it only after eight minutes, the time it takes
light to reach us from the sun. . . .
Similarly, we do not know what is happening at the
moment farther away in the universe: the light that
we see from distant galaxies left them millions of
years ago, and in the case of the most distant
object that we have seen, the light left some
eight thousand million years ago.
Thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it
as it was in the past.
Stephen Hawking (1942- )
_A Brief History Of Time_ [1996], "Space And Time"
