Ask Marilyn
®
If many stars are so far from Earth that their light takes millions of years to reach us, how do we know they still exist? —Sue Charles, Marshfield, Mass.
We don’t. When we look at the stars, we are viewing the past. If a star is a million light years away (our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years wide), we are observing the way it looked a million years ago, not the way it looks today. And that’s a relatively close star! Yet we can make educated guesses about the life spans of various stars, depending on their characteristics. In the case of many massive stars—
by Marilyn vos Savant
which are among the most luminous and short-lived—we can be confident that they’re not there when we see them. Even more mind-boggling: Say that a certain star will live for 5 million years, but it’s so far away that its light takes 10 million years to reach us. By the time we can see it for the first time, it has already been gone for 5 million years. Why is a cash drawer called a “till”? —Cheryl M., Bellingham, Wash.
The word goes back more than 500 years. Till (til, tille, tyll, or tylle) had long been the term for a small tray, drawer, or compartment used for holding
valuables—such as jewels, money, or documents—inside a larger chest or cabinet, etc. Most of those usages are now obsolete. Today, the term refers only to a cash drawer or ®
Numbrix
Complete 1 to 81 so the numbers follow a horizontal or vertical path— no diagonals.
More Ways to Play! Print and play a new puzzle every day at
Parade.com/numbrix
similar receptacle in which the money for routine transactions is temporarily stored. To ask a question, visit Parade .com/askmarilyn
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