New record for oldest galaxy ever observed

A new record has been set for the oldest galaxy ever observed by humans. “MACS0647-JD” was viewed by using the gravitational lensing effect of a massive galaxy cluster. It dates to only 420 million years after the Big Bang. At that time the Universe was inconceivably smaller than it is today. The size of the galaxy is only 600 light-years wide. Compare that to our Milky Way which is 150,000 light years wide.

Just thinking about this is trippy. Its difficult to even think what it means to see the light emissions of something so far away that that it took light 13.3 billion years to reach us. It kind of bends the concepts of what we think of as comprising reality and time. It makes me wonder what exactly are we seeing? The “object” the light from which is now visible to us after 13.3 billion years – is it actually real? Does observing energy emitting from something make it real? Or is there some other sense of real perhaps as that object exists, or fails to exist, now? The stars in that galaxy have all burned out by now, but what is the real time? The time we observe? Or the time of the “now” that we can never know, separated as we are by the gulf of 13.3 billion lightyears?

I wonder about something else also: where does all the light in the Universe go? Is it not considered a law that all matter and energy is conserved? But does not light carry energy away? But can anything be further than the edge of the Universe?

If it is the destiny of the Universe to just keep expanding forever, then it seems like an anomaly that it even could have existed in the first place. What was responsible for it to be in the first place? For the Big Bang? And, whatever it is, what has happened to it?

Here’s another thing I have been thinking of: One learns about enlightenment. Buddha spoke of “nibbana” which translates as extinguishment. But enlightenment is not the same as non-existence, right? But if it is not non-existence, then what is it?

We tend to conceive of enlightenment as being an end-point, but maybe this is wrong? Is it just a disposition, a way that is arrived at which self-perpetuates? If it is a self-perpetuating form of self-destining being then it makes me wonder what other types of existence there are. What sorts of planes could exist where enlightened existence could take place?

But we are told that it is not something we can learn mentally. It is something we must actualize. One doesn’t learn to play violin by studing it conceptually. One learns by holding it, by touching it, by connecting one’s body, mind, and soul with it. Then the music comes from within and the violin is only an instrument through which the music is expressed.