Good question! A shadow looks like something but it's really not. Isn't that cool? A shadow doesn't actually have any components. <queue illuminating conversation about how light works>
A shadow (from the sun) is confirmation that light has traveled 148.29 million kilometres, at light speed, completely uninterrupted only to be stopped within that last few feet because of you, you asshole.
technically not at light speed, as light only goes light speed in a vacuum. The difference is minuscule, as there isn't much there, but it's enough to slow light.
Well... I mean “technically” light always goes light speed- the speed of light, the same as a car always goes car speed. It just happens that a car going freeway speed and a car going school zone speed are (hopefully) not going the same speed. So they likely meant “the speed of light in a vacuum..” itself technically a misnomer since space on the whole isn’t generally a “true” vacuum since there is cosmic dust and other particles and forces that can act on light.
There’s a specific type of fallacy in thought that ascribes intent or purpose to natural cause and effect. Light did not travel here to touch Earth- it just traveled in the direction it was emitted- but- if one still wants to wax poetic- be assured. Light bounces off of things. Just because YOU stopped it doesn’t mean it won’t reflect on to the ground. And you stopping it from touching the ground isn’t just what makes shadows- it’s also what let’s us see you. If light went through you or didn’t touch you- we wouldn’t be able to see you, or a tree, or whatever else. So if we want to say light came this vast journey with purpose- I’d say it’s purpose was to let all us creatures see the world, and to hit the leaves of plants so they can live and grow. No shadows- no flowers.
And if that light didn’t hit you instead of the ground, that light wouldn’t be captured by the eyes of whoever is “seeing you”- who is actually just seeing the light bouncing off you and not actually you. If no one ever saw it- there’d be no one to know it ever existed. It would have come all this way and no one would ever know or have a reason to care. So that shadow is just proof to the fact that light did something that mattered. You blocking that light from hitting the Earth just helped it continue its near infinite journey, and helped it do something someone would see, appreciate- for a brief moment of its existence. That’s not something that happens to light as it blasts across the vastness of desolate space.
Would definitely recommend