There is a level of being stoned that my friends and I have recently termed “the wonders.” It’s that moment when you start to gaze around your world and really think about things. It often leads to ridiculous statements such as “have you ever thought about color, dude? Like, what is it?!” but occasionally you have a moment of clarity that upon sober inspection the next day holds its value. What follows is the best thought I’ve ever had of that nature and, amazingly, did not come while stoned. It came to me while reading my favorite book (for the 6th time), Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.* Inspired by all the talk of science in the book though, I decided it needed to be tested out on some stoned people. What kind of scientist would I be otherwise?

So here it is. (Apologies to any real scientists for what follows and the errors which certainly lie therein)

When you look at a star you’re not seeing the star as it is at this moment. You’re seeing the star as it was when the light left it. After all, when we observe something what we actually see is the light that bounces off of it (which is why we cannot see things in the dark). Being that light travels at a ridiculously quick speed, almost everything we see during the course of our day we see in essentially real time. So if I wave to you, you see the image of me waving at (almost) the exact same moment I am actually waving. But stars are so far away that even at the speed of light, it’s light takes a while to reach us. Hundreds of years, or millions, even. So what you’re essentially doing when you look at a star is seeing into the past (which I believe is a line I’ve lifted completely from Bryson here). Pretty cool to be able to see the history of something happen live, is it not?

Similarly, as Bryson also notes in his book, if someone were observing Earth from 200 light years away they would be seeing the year 1810 go down because it would have taken 200 years for the light from Earth to reach them. Travel further out to 2000 light years away and they would be watching the Roman Empire. Also a very cool idea.

But that is not my stoner thought. That is merely the base knowledge we must all have to move on from here. Got it? You sure? Light travels quickly but not all that quickly in the grand scheme of things? We can see the past by looking at stars and you could see our past by looking at earth from great distances? Great, let’s move on.

Everything that has ever gone down on Earth out in the open has reflected light out into the universe. So long as a cloud or planets or another star didn’t get in the way, that light will travel out for as long as it can. In the grand scheme of things it would be pretty dim since it would be competing with the likes of billions of stars, but it would be there. From the dinosaurs to Jesus’ crucifixion to the time you took a piss on the side of the highway because you couldn’t find a rest stop, the light from every event in the history of the open world has been shot out into space like one continuous movie. All you would need to watch the entire course of known human history would be a pretty distant vantage point - many tens of thousands of light years away - a great telescope and a lot of time.

But here is the part that trips me out. Because of that little trick of nature, our lives are essentially permanently recorded in light. We will all die and someday the Sun will explode, but the light from our world and our lives will be quietly traveling about the universe, further and further away, perfectly preserving the entire history of our planet. In simple terms, while we will not live forever, the light we cast off will. Leading to my stoner thought that we are all essentially immortal. Beings far away - and with really, really great technology - could gather around their space-tables and watch Earth happen on their telescope TV’s (which is eerily similar to a plot from South Park).

As long as you can see the sky, your will exist in light forever. You may just have to wait till you’ve been dead for a few million or billion years until some beings far out in space stumble upon you taking a piss on the side of the highway because you couldn’t find a rest stop.

If that’s not a great stoner thought, I don’t know what is.

*Everyone should read this book. It will essentially give you The Wonders without having to engage in illegal drug use.