Astronomical objects are so far away from us that our distance from them is usually not measured in millions or even billions of miles, but "light years". Even though this sounds like a unit of time, it's really a distance - specifically the distance light travels in one year (which turns out to be about 6 trillion miles).
One of my favorite things to observe is other galaxies. They are quite far away from us, pants-shittingly far. The closest one that's not one of our little "satellites" is about 3 million light years away from us, and many more are billions of light years distant.
Here's one of my favorite galaxies to observe:
it's called "M51" or the "Whirpool Galaxy", and is about 20 million light years distant from us.
Even though the light year is often used as a distance unit, I like to think about the time aspect more often. When I'm looking at M51, the light that is traveling through my telescope and hitting my eye took 20 million years to get here. When that light started on its journey 20 million years ago, what was happening on earth? What did this place that I'm sitting at right now look like then? A telescope is in many ways a time machine that allows us to look into the past.
So what does this have to do with weight loss? Well, I realized while looking at a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my weight loss (and gains) over the years, is that as I'm getting thinner, in some ways (at least weight-wise), I'm taking my body back through time.
In a couple of months, I'll dip into the 240's. I haven't been in the 240's since 2009, but the real time-jump will happen when I get below 200. Except for a brief period in 2003, I haven't been below 200 since 1997 - a time travel of 16 "weight years". Does that make my elliptical machine basically a Delorean?
I'll see if I can find the flux capacitor on it next time I work out.
I'm down 2 lbs this week, with another 1/2" off my waist. 260's are right around the corner!
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