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Quote by Richard Kurin

“The telescope, in enabling us to look far out into space, also allows us to look back in time. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. When we look up into the daylight sky, we are not seeing the sun as it currently is but as it was about eight minutes ago, since it takes that long for the light radiating from this familiar star to travel 93 million miles to Earth. Similarly, when the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) receives light waves from the depths of the universe, those waves will have originated from points as far as 76 sextillion (76,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away. It will have taken those waves some 13 billion years to arrive on earth, meaning they left their source about a million years after the big bang, and roughly nine to ten years before Earth even formed.”

Quote by Richard Kurin

Book:The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects
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The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects

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Richard Kurin

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HistoryMemoryPainful MemoriesSmithsonian
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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ArtistLife And DeathMuseumSmithsonianOrnithologyField Of Study
Book:The Marsh Queen
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PolicyEntitledPurpose In LifeSmithsonianSabbaticalOrnithology
Book:The Marsh Queen
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Literary StylePissThree Dots
Book:Conversations with Professor Y
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Author:Lucie Amundsen
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