{"id":214405,"date":"2025-05-21T05:20:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/do-photons-wear-out-an-astrophysicist-explains-lights-ability-to-travel-vast-cosmic-distances-without-losing-energy"},"modified":"2025-05-21T05:20:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:20:43","slug":"do-photons-wear-out-an-astrophysicist-explains-lights-ability-to-travel-vast-cosmic-distances-without-losing-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/do-photons-wear-out-an-astrophysicist-explains-lights-ability-to-travel-vast-cosmic-distances-without-losing-energy","title":{"rendered":"Do photons wear out? An astrophysicist explains light\u2019s ability to travel vast cosmic distances without losing energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/do-photons-wear-out-an-astrophysicist-explains-lights-ability-to-travel-vast-cosmic-distances-without-losing-energy.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My telescope, set up for astrophotography in my light-polluted San Diego backyard, was pointed at a galaxy unfathomably far from Earth. My wife, Cristina, walked up just as the first space photo streamed to my tablet. It sparkled on the screen in front of us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/science\/explore-the-night-sky\/hubble-messier-catalog\/messier-101\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pinwheel galaxy<\/a>,\u201d I said. The name is derived from its shape\u2014albeit this pinwheel contains about a trillion stars.<\/p>\n<p>The light from the Pinwheel traveled for 25 million years across the universe\u2014about 150 quintillion miles\u2014to get to my telescope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My telescope, set up for astrophotography in my light-polluted San Diego backyard, was pointed at a galaxy unfathomably far from Earth. My wife, Cristina, walked up just as the first space photo streamed to my tablet. It sparkled on the screen in front of us. \u201cThat\u2019s the Pinwheel galaxy,\u201d I said. The name is derived [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}