If you’ve ever taken in the wonders of the night sky, chances are you may be glancing into the distant past. Even the things you see surrounding you are old news. Well, maybe only mere nano seconds old. “Light travels at about 1 foot per nano second,” says Katie Mack of minutephysics. “Everything you look at is to one degree or another in the past. The farther away in space, the more ancient in time.” Take the Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way’s closest neighbor. If you’re lucky enough to see this cosmic giant on a clear evening, you’re viewing it 2.5 million years in the past.