Looking to the Past

The James Webb Telescope has provided us with the oldest image of the universe yet known, showing the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 4.6 billion light-years away. This means that when you look at the image provided, we are literally looking back four and a half billion years into the past. The Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old. When the light recorded by the James Webb Telescope left its source, the Earth may not have finished forming. The scale of time depicted is boggling. And look at the image again. Those aren’t stars. Those are galaxies. The size of the image is bigger than anything you have seen with the naked eye. The vastness of the universe, in space and time, is enough to give pause. So take a moment, and just consider it. Nothing else. Just think about the scale of the things we’ve just discussed. And think about the fact that we have the knowledge to understand these vast scales.