is this true?

Question

Are the stars really 4 years behind us because my english teacher said they were.....

if so does that mean the sun is too?

Answer 1

If the stars are 4 light years away, most are much farther. If a star located 1000 light years away exploded 999 years ago, you would first see it happen next year. The sun is about 8 minutes away.

Answer 2

The Sun is pretty much WITH us in time; its light taking a little over 8 minutes to hit us. On the other hand, light shining at us from the next nearest star Rigil Kentaurus (α Cen) takes a little over 4 years to get to Earth. I wonder therefore if your teacher was rather telling you that the NEAREST STAR is "4 light years" behind us. Anyway, the position of that star, behind or ahead of us, would depend on which way we're facing.

"4 years behind us" would mean 4 years in our past, I suppose: so the statement would make some sense if it were referring to the light that we see from α Centauri (Proxima being too dim to be seen from Earth by the naked eye). Indeed, that light would have left its source 4.3 years "behind us" in our past, which would have been sometime in the late summer of 2004.

I think you should print out this page for your English teacher and let him or her choose the best answer, because only s/he knows for sure what s/he said.

Answer 3

Yes it is true about the stars but no the sun is not. The stars are so far away they are light years away and the sun is not a light year away. Depending on how for away the star is some might be 4 light years some are more and some are less. A light year is how long it takes light to travel at the speed of light to get somewhere. I believe that you see the sun like 4 minutes in the past maybe it is 30 minutes in the past. When you look at the stars you are seeing what they looked like years ago not today. So your teacher was correct.

Answer 4

I think what your teacher means is that light from some stars (possibly the nearest stars) takes up to 4 years to traverse the expanse of space between the star and earth. So the "flicker" of a star you see today, actually happened 4 years ago.

This is not the same for the sun, which is much much closer.

Answer 5

Only 4 years!! The light from some stars has taken thousands and thousands of years to reach the earth. And yes, as the sun is a star this also applies but as the sun is relatively near earth, only 93 million miles away, the time span is less.

Answer 6

well what your teacher was saying is that a star 4 light years away will look to us the way it looked 4 years ago becuase the light takes 4 years to get here. now the sun on the other hand will only be like 8 minutes behind.

also there is no star 4 light years away the nearest star other then the sun is Proxima Centauri and that is 4.2 light years away.

Answer 7

The nearest star, other than the sun, is about 4 light years away. That means the light from that star took about 4 years to reach us, so we see the star as it was 4 years ago. More distant stars have a similar issue. We see some galaxies as they existed 10 billion years ago, before the earth existed.

The sun is about 8 light minutes away, so we see it as it was eight minutes ago.

Answer 8

Like others have said, you could have a star that is four light years away and you could think of that as being four years "behind" us. The sun is much closer - not even a light year away.

Answer 9

Your English teacher should stick to teaching English. What he/she probably meant is that the nearest star other than the sun, a star called Proxima Centauri, is about four light years away. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year, so this means that the light from that star is from four years ago. Other stars are at other distances, so if a star was 1,000 light years away, we see it as it was 1,000 years ago. If a star is 4,368 light years away, we see it as it was 4,368 years ago, and so on. The Sun is only eight light minutes away, so we see it as it was eight minutes ago.

Answer 10

By "stars", was your teacher referring to Proxima Centauri? B/c that's the nearest star, and it takes about four years for it's light to reach us. The sun's light takes about eight minutes. Most stars are millions of light years away.