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You are conflating reference frames - it determines causality in your local reference frame but not in any other reference frame. The concept of "real time" -

You are conflating reference frames - it determines causality in your local reference frame but not in any other reference frame. The concept of "real time" - like all time - is entirely relative to the reference frame you are using.

wruza 2y ago
Correct, there's no global timeline, so it's not clear what "just" 300M years ago even means. Some RFs seen it already, and some will never see it. But in ours it happened in Jun 2024. It's 300M light years away, not ago.
- mfranc42 2y ago
  But there is a global timeline. The age of the universe itself. It happened when the universe was roughly 300M years younger. Somebody might say the universe was created a year ago if they traveled through it extremely close to the speed of light. But we know how fast we travel by measuring redshift/blueshift of the cosmic microwave background and it's definitely far from any relativistic speed. There must be some effect of gravity, but that is also within a rounding error. So, I'd say we are much closer to the "truth" than somebody who travels through the universe a few percent of the speed of light or "lives" right next to the supermassive black hole. Whether something we will never see exists or happens is a philosophical question akin to "if a tree falls in the forest..."
  - mr_toad 2y ago
    But a distant observer could also make the same measurement of the CMW background and see themselves at rest. And yet we could be moving away from either other at relativistic velocities, due to the expansion of the universe. Due to this relative motion we will see different ordering of events at different locations, despite both being at rest relative to the CMW background, so we can’t really say there is a global timeline. The thing is that the CMW background isn’t global, we don’t see the same background as a distant observer. CMW photons that are passing us now will take time to reach a distant observer, and vice versa.
- JamesHist 2y ago
  There is a global timeline. It is distorted, just like space.

wruza 2y ago

Correct, there's no global timeline, so it's not clear what "just" 300M years ago even means. Some RFs seen it already, and some will never see it. But in ours it happened in Jun 2024. It's 300M light years away, not ago.

mfranc42 2y ago
But there is a global timeline. The age of the universe itself. It happened when the universe was roughly 300M years younger. Somebody might say the universe was created a year ago if they traveled through it extremely close to the speed of light. But we know how fast we travel by measuring redshift/blueshift of the cosmic microwave background and it's definitely far from any relativistic speed. There must be some effect of gravity, but that is also within a rounding error. So, I'd say we are much closer to the "truth" than somebody who travels through the universe a few percent of the speed of light or "lives" right next to the supermassive black hole. Whether something we will never see exists or happens is a philosophical question akin to "if a tree falls in the forest..."
- mr_toad 2y ago
  But a distant observer could also make the same measurement of the CMW background and see themselves at rest. And yet we could be moving away from either other at relativistic velocities, due to the expansion of the universe. Due to this relative motion we will see different ordering of events at different locations, despite both being at rest relative to the CMW background, so we can’t really say there is a global timeline. The thing is that the CMW background isn’t global, we don’t see the same background as a distant observer. CMW photons that are passing us now will take time to reach a distant observer, and vice versa.
JamesHist 2y ago
There is a global timeline. It is distorted, just like space.