While we’re all aware that light travels at a fixed speed, approximately 299,792 kilometers per second, here’s something to ponder: when we gaze up at the night sky, we’re not seeing the universe as it is, but as it was. The light from those distant stars and galaxies has taken years, centuries, millennia, even millions of years to reach our eyes.

When we look out into space, we’re essentially looking back in time. Each star could be seen as a time capsule, holding the story of our universe’s past. We’re not just observers of space, but also of time.

But what happens when we reverse the perspective? If an advanced civilization were looking at Earth from a galaxy that’s say, a million light years away, they wouldn’t see us. They’d see a million years into Earth’s past.

Could there be civilizations out there, observing our planet and witnessing events that occurred long before humans ever existed? If so, they wouldn’t know about our existence, just as we might be looking at distant stars whose planets host civilizations that arose after the light we see departed.

Could we travel fast enough, out into space, and see into the past? Could we one day actually observers crimes that had taken place in the past? Solve mysteries?