image creditIt doesn't matter whether or not you've actually witnessed the aurora borealis firsthand - you've got an idea of what it looks like. Could your great-grandfather have imagined the same?
Technological innovation has given us the photograph, the moving picture, broadcast television, the internet, data storage - this string of technology has enabled us to alter our preconceptions of what is possible in nature, and thus reality, even without us having witnessed it firsthand.
