I remember when they put "ain't" in the dictionary. It must have been in the 1950s because I was in elementary school at the time. Funny, you hardly ever hear people say "ain't" anymore but, back in those days, everybody said it a lot. Our teachers wouldn't let us get away with it in school but, as soon as we got out for the day, we were back to saying it. The teachers told us that we couldn't use it in school because it wasn't in the dictionary, and that was that. Well, one day a kid came in with a brand new dictionary and "ain't" was in it. The teacher didn't believe him until he looked it up and showed her. She was flabbergasted at first, but she quickly regained her composure when she saw that the dictionary listed it as a slang word. "We don't use slang words in school.", she said, and that was that.
Another thing about school in those days was that we were not allowed to call people by their nicknames. If a guy was named William, you couldn't call him Bill or Willie, the teachers all insisted that the only acceptable name for you was the one on your birth certificate. I had a friend who everybody called Jack. One day I saw his signature and it said "John", and I asked him about it. He explained that Jack was actually a nickname for John and, since his father was also named John, his family had always called him Jack to avoid confusion. When the teacher called his name at school, he didn't always respond because he was so used to being called Jack. Later, I met a guy in the army whose name really was Jack, that's the way it was on his birth certificate and everything. I said that must have driven his teachers nuts, and he said that it certainly did. He even carried a copy of his birth certificate around with him in case a teacher insisted on calling him John.
Okay, there are two stars, one is 10,000 light years away and the other is 20,000 light years away. If God or somebody instantaneously shut both those stars off at the same time, and somebody on Earth happened to be looking at both of them through a telescope at the time, would he see them both disappear at once, or would he see the second one go out 10,000 years later? See that's what I don't understand. If the speed of light is absolute and constant, and light travels so many miles in a year, the light from the farther star should take twice as long to get here, but they say that it doesn't. Wait a minute! You said that the speed of light appears to be absolute and constant regardless of the observer's position or state of motion. Does that mean that it's not really absolute and constant, it just appears to be? Then there's the time difference. The Earth and both of those stars are in three different time zones, or something like that. If God or somebody snuffed out both stars at the same time, would He do it in Earth time, first star time, or second star time? I know you don't believe in God, but hypothetically.
Sound is different. For one thing it's a lot slower than light and, for another thing it needs a medium like air or water to transmit its vibrations. Sound doesn't work in outer space, but radio does, because radio waves are electromagnetic like light waves. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, and it takes eight or nine seconds for them to get here from Mars. If a radio signal was transmitted from Mars, and an other signal was simultaneously sent from the Moon, would they both be received on Earth at the same time? And which time, Earth time, Moon time, or Mars time? Makes Daylight Saving Time look simple by comparison, doesn't it.
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