... also we are stardust .... 
Hilde sat in the rocker very attached to her father. It was nearly midnight. They stared at the bay, while the odd star drawing in the pale sky. Gentle waves hitting the rocks below the pier.
The father broke the silence
"It's strange to think that we live in a small planet in the universe.
"Yes.
"The Earth is one of many planets moving in an orbit around the sun. But only one planet Earth is alive.
- And perhaps the only one in the universe?
"Yes, it is possible. But it may be that the universe is full of life, because the universe is immense. And the distances are so enormous that the light measured in minutes and light years.
- What does that really mean?
"One minute is the distance light light travels in one minute. And that's a lot, because light travels through the universe at 300,000 kilometers a second. A light minute is, in other words, 300,000 by 60, or 18 million miles. A light year is therefore almost ten billion, with b, kilometers
- How far is the sun?
"A little over eight light-minutes. The rays of the sun that warmed the cheeks in a warm June day have traveled the world for eight minutes before coming to us.
- Go on!
-The distance to Pluto, which is the farthest planet in our solar system is more than five hours of light from our own planet. When an astronomer looks at Pluto through his telescope, is actually five hours back in time. We could also say that the image of Pluto employs five hours to get here.
"It's a little hard to believe, but I think I understand what you say.
"Okay, Hilde. But we are only beginning to guide us, you know? Our own sun is one among other 400,000 million stars in a galaxy we call the Milky Way. This galaxy is like a large disk that our own sun is located in one of several spiral arms. If we look at the starry sky on a clear night in winter, we see a wide belt of stars. That's because we look to the center of the Milky Way. "It will
for this reason that in Swedish the Milky Way is called Winter Street. The distance to our nearest star in the Milky Way is four light years. Maybe it's that we see on the island there in front. Imagine that right now there is someone up there looking through a powerful telescope at Bjerkeley, then would Bjerkeley as it was four years ago. Perhaps seeing a girl of eleven years sitting in this swing swinging his legs.
-let me stunned.
"But that's only the nearest neighboring star. Across the galaxy, or the "nebula" as well call it, has a dimension of 90,000 light years. That means that light takes the number of years to get from one end of the galaxy to another. When we look at a star in the Milky Way is 50,000 light years to our own planet, then look back 50,000 years in time.
This thought is too big for a head as small as mine.
"The only way we can look to the universe is looking back in time. We will never know how things in the universe. We only know what it was. When we look at a star that is thousands of light years, actually traveled back thousands of years in the history of the universe.
"It is quite inconceivable.
"But everything we arrive at our eye as light waves. And these waves spend time in traveling through space. We can make a comparison with the thunders. We always hear the thunder a few seconds after seeing lightning. That is because sound waves move more slowly than light waves. When I hear thunder, I hear the sound of something that happened a while ago. The same applies to the stars. When I watch a star that is thousands of light years away, see the "thunder" of an event that is thousands of years back in time.
Sophie's World. Jostein Gaarder
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på Timman 
