Some say that when you’re engrossed in work that you truly love, time seems to stand still. Hours can pass without your noticing. Or, some feel that time stands still when they are mesmerized by a beautiful piece of art or a glorious sunset.

Our perception of time is a funny thing. Certain events make it seem to pass quickly and others seem to cause it to slow down. But for all of us, here on Earth, the amount of real time that passes is the same.

I’ve been interested in physics, astronomy, and generally anything related to space since I was a kid dreaming about becoming an astronaut. I remember learning about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and how space and time are related. I was, and still am, amazed at the notion that time is relative and can pass at different rates depending on the speed of an object. But I never really thought very deeply about it, beyond reading some interesting concepts in various science fiction novels. However, that changed recently.

I watched a video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about time dilation. He pointed out that photons, which obviously travel at the speed of light, do not experience the passing of time. This means that when we view a star in the night sky, the light we see (the photons), which have been traveling for thousands, or even millions, of years, have experienced no passage of time.

This kind of blew my mind. In other words, the light we see from far, far away hasn’t aged. From the photon’s perspective, the moment it left its star is the same moment that we see it. Wow.

There is so much we don’t know about the universe and it almost seems that the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know. I realize this particular fact is not new, but I just never thought about it this way. It makes me wonder: if photons can travel across the cosmos without aging, what else could do the same? And thinking about that kind of makes time stand still.

Here’s the video if you’re interested: