A really big question

[Astyanax]

Something seems way off to me concerning speed of light and the distance of any given celestial object we know is there because of it's light.

As BeyondKnowledge implies, we only know it was there because of its light. We don’t know that it still is. But it’s the same with any object, Randy; even reflected light from a page held ten inches in front of your eyes takes time to get to them, and in that time, no matter how short, the book could have vanished without your knowing of it. The sensation of the book weighing in your hands would not help either, because nerve signals travel much, much slower than the speed of light.

The only difference between the two examples is simply that the lag is too short to notice in day-to-day life. But if you tried to chat with an Artemis crew while they were in orbit round the Moon, there’d be a 1.3sec delay between you speaking and them hearing you, and vice versa.
 

maybe we can't be sure the planet or star we see in the night sky is still there. I mean if a star is say fourteen light years away form planet Earth. How do we know that star is still there when the light telling it IS there, is delivering fourteen year old information?

We don’t. Hubble has imaged a supernova 7.7bn light-years from Earth. The light it photographed came from a star-destroying explosion that occurred when the Universe was less than half its present age. That supernova doesn’t exist any more. Even the debris from it isn’t there any more; both its own momentum and the expansion of space itself have caused it to travel who knows where in the meantime.

[Astyanax]

Einstein has a theory that gravity changes the speed of light and it recently seems to have been proven experimentaly.

I read the article and glanced at Li’s paper. I don’t think he’s proven anything.
 

The results... are consistent with the variable speed of light model Einstein proposed in 1911, although Li’s preliminary results are much larger than that model predicts. Source

In other words, he has a bunch of results but they don’t actually fit the theory. Let’s see whether anyone replicates his study before we take any of this seriously.

[Randyvine]

We don’t. Hubble has imaged a supernova 7.7bn light-years from Earth. The light it photographed came from a star-destroying explosion that occurred when the Universe was less than half its present age. That supernova doesn’t exist any more. Even the debris from it isn’t there any more; both its own momentum and the expansion of space itself have caused it to travel who knows where in the meantime.

This is kinda cool in regards to size again. If I were proportioned to the right degree
the universe would be much like a night on the 4th of July in San Bernardino Ca..
Rockets and bombs, grenade launchers, sparklers pin wheels lady fingers RPGs
automatic weapons.   Amazing.

And with regards to mass would something as huge as the universe need more
mass than that which already exists? I would say yes. And what about the energy it
would take to make any movement happen. I would say more than even exists
would be needed. I'm go'n way out there now that you guys encouraged me. lol

[BeyondKnowledge]

I read the article and glanced at Li’s paper. I don’t think he’s proven anything.
 

In other words, he has a bunch of results but they don’t actually fit the theory. Let’s see whether anyone replicates his study before we take any of this seriously.

I read it again and thought it over. I think they just measured the known time difference caused by gravity. To measure the difference in the speed of light. The oscilloscope would have to be calibrated at each measurement height for time from a reference source unmoved in the experiment. I think they would have said they did that if in fact they did. 

It is a time difference rather than a speed difference.

[BeyondKnowledge]

This is kinda cool in regards to size again. If I were proportioned to the right degree
the universe would be much like a night on the 4th of July in San Bernardino Ca..
Rockets and bombs, grenade launchers, sparklers pin wheels lady fingers RPGs
automatic weapons.   Amazing.

And with regards to mass would something as huge as the universe need more
mass than that which already exists? I would say yes. And what about the energy it
would take to make any movement happen. I would say more than even exists
would be needed. I'm go'n way out there now that you guys encouraged me. lol

Actually if you scaled the universe to the size of our solar system, it would just be a black viod. Everything in it would be the size of subatomic particles. 

The whole universe is probably as a guess 99.99% nothing. Just empty space. Possibly even less mater than that.

[Randyvine]

Actually if you scaled the universe to the size of our solar system, it would just be a black viod. Everything in it would be the size of subatomic particles. 

The whole universe is probably as a guess 99.99% nothing. Just empty space. Possibly even less mater than that.

I marvel at how you people even get your head around this stuff. So much
of what I guess is better referred to as discovery rather than knowledge, doesn't
make any sense to simple observations. Seeing a sky full of stars at night as 
we do on Earth. Research says nope sorry that's an illusion. So it really is
all smoke and mirrors.

[BeyondKnowledge]

I marvel at how you people even get your head around this stuff. So much
of what I guess is better referred to as discovery rather than knowledge, doesn't
make any sense to simple observations. Seeing a sky full of stars at night as 
we do on Earth. Research says nope sorry that's an illusion. So it really is
all smoke and mirrors.

Try this for a visualization of scale. 




Although the whole universe image would be darker the scale is pretty good.

[Randyvine]

Try this for a visualization of scale. 

[Video: https://youtu.be/x896_J1k8rM]

Although the whole universe image would be darker the scale is pretty good.

So impressive all that science has achieved to make a simulation like
that possible and have confidence in it's accurracy. As I watched I couldn't
help considering the possibility that the exisrence of the human being would
have to be extremely important to someone somewhere. If we find out one day
that all that out there, amidst the darkness, only has one reason for being there.

If all that only exists to make our existence possible? Think how important that would
make our survival to FILL IN THE BLANK. Then again just coming to understand 
that possibility is every bit as viable as anything else we've considered to be a
long sought explanation. It just seems the randomness of a hostile universe alone
would protest our existence to the point of impossibility. I don't see how it could
even consider the first thought.

[BeyondKnowledge]

It seems bistro math has struck again. Messing with my phone in a restraint, I came across this. 




A real Hubble telescope image and what it meant to science along with how and why it was made.

And remember, each single image is showing an area of the sky smaller than you can cover with your fingertip with an outstretched arm.

[Randyvine]

Let me know what you think after watching it because I found it cemented certain beliefs which I kept tossing around my forever questioning what is reality mind.

Here's another thought that may very well confound you further. As you
mentioned;

In the beginning- time

God created- an interaction with-mind

The Heavens- space

and the Earth- matter

That is so in our face.