Alex McColgan

Well, it would probably look mostly the same, right up until some part of it changed what it was doing, and you watched as the rest of it caught up.

Which is what we see here.

It's not so unreasonable to think of it this way, and it certainly helps our intuition.

This is the state of affairs for objects that are moving.

If we are moving, that's the way we see everything else.

which has some pretty mind-bending implications about what we are seeing right now across the universe.

Of course, this only applies when things are moving at a substantial portion of the speed of light, so in the day-to-day you probably wouldn't notice it.

And because of the great speeds involved, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where you could take advantage of this principle even if you could use the first barn door closing to predict the future of the second.

There are limits on how fast information can travel after all, and this time stretching is only noticeable when objects are travelling near to that limit.

While I've talked about the future of the barn and the past of the barn, perhaps that's the wrong point of view.

To you, these events are all in the now, your now.

It's just the barn that might see things differently, with its own now, where it's closing and opening its doors simultaneously, and you are the one who's splayed out as a range across time.

But it just causes me to think about the universe in a very different light.

One where time and space really are relative points of view.

Wish me luck.

Is the universe inescapable?

If we were to conquer the limitations of light speed and were to travel to space's furthest edge, what might we find?

Just more space?

Infinite planets and planetary systems?

Or would we somehow come back to where we started?