PAST LIGHT CONE

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Thus, in the realm of classical physics, the concept of cause is dramatically broadened, suggesting that nearly every event within an event’s ‘past light cone’ – everything in its past – could be considered causal. To illustrate, consider the example of a tree falling in a forest. Here, the event’s past light cone encompasses all preceding events that could have influenced this particular tree’s fall; the concept, the ‘past light cone of an event’, indicates that information or influence travels at or below the speed of light. For the falling tree, the past light cone includes immediate factors like wind, the tree’s health, and soil conditions, as well as a multitude of more distant events – from the formation of weather patterns to ecological changes and even distant solar activity impacting Earth’s climate. No matter how seemingly unrelated or remote, each event converges within the tree’s past light cone, contributing to a complex web of causality.

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