The Most Profound Photo (so far)

It's the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), a glimpse thirteen billion years back toward the beginning of our Universe. A one million second time exposure. It's certainly a good candidate for the most profound photo yet -- if you know of a better shot, tell me.

I think it's excellent place to start my blog since it should give us a hint of reality, certainly more than any stack of holy books written by ... I digress. I do that lots.

It's a glimpse back about thirteen billion years toward the beginning of our Universe (which is 13.8 billion years old, give or take a hundred million or so.)

Just what are we looking at. Like most things astronomical, our brains (mine at least) needs a crutch to comprehend, if that's even possible, what we're looking at. It's actually a huge photo of a tiny portion of the sky. How tiny? Compared to the full moon, it's the red square at the bottom left of the following photo. That square what one twelve millionth of the sky looks like.

In full resolution, it's 6200x6200 pixels, 60.9MB, but let's zoom in on at full resolution on just one percent of the HUDF.
The larger yellow swirl is a closer, foreground galaxy, but the smaller dots are dwarf galaxies fully 13 billion light years away(and years ago when the light started our way. They're much further away now.) In the full HUDF, there about about 10,000 galaxies.

In whatever direction we look, we are surrounded by a fog of galaxies. How many? Crunch the numbers. 10,000 x 12 million x the number of stars in each galaxy(400 million in the Milky Way but these are dwarf galaxies that by now have condensed into larger galaxies) and astronomers come up with about 3 x 10²². Or, uh, ten thousand million million million. LOTS. And that's just the visible universe.

The actual universe may be infinite (the math infinite not infinite as haphazardly thrown about on TV or describing alleged supernatural beings, etc. Very, very, very few things are infinite. Perhaps nothing is infinite.) or a mere 10²⁶ as large (3 x 10⁴⁸ stars) or even a little smaller than the visible one (How can the actual universe be smaller than the visible. It's all done with mirrors. Seriously)

About time to wind things up. My point is that reality is not the latest craze on TV, but something much bigger. The HUDF is a glimpse of the Universe. As Carl Sagan might say -- the Universe is all there ever was or will be. We ain't diddly shit and everything, even our gods (especially them), the past, future, politics, the price of tea in China must fit into the Universe.(gotta work on that last sentence)

Vietnam Deja Vu all over again.

I recently came across a Blog in which the otherwise sane author listed how Afghanistan was no Vietnam then said those who dare compare the two to “shove it up your asses.” And argued that with a new President, we were at now at Square One and since the Afghans are mercenaries, we should just throw money at them. My reply(no response from her) was;

So what are you going to say when the Generals ask for another 30,000 thousand next year. Especially as the Europeans start going home(they’ve learned a little from history).

Being both a Vietnam combat vet and pinko liberal of long standing, I take exception to your “shove it up your asses” attitude toward the “Vietnam Again” position.

• This is Vietnam Part 1. The Afghanistan War, like Vietnam, is a Civil War. (Where do you think the Taliban come from. The “bad guys” are Afghans.)
• This is Vietnam Part 2. Even more than Vietnam, the Karzai Government is utterly, totally corrupt. Would you risk your life for Karzai. Die for Diem? I’m sure you would.
• This is Vietnam Part 3. Even more than North Vietnam, the Taliban depends upon outside support. Their money, weapons come from outside. There is little or no industry in Afghanistan — much less than North Vietnam.
• This is Vietnam Part 4. Most civilian deaths in both Vietnam and Afghanistan come from airpower. Airpower has always killed civilians, and smart bombs, drones are no exception. Don’t let the Pentagon spin it otherwise. I say this from the perspective of having flown 190+ combat sorties and having killed lots of civilians. Airpower kills civilians and the occasional combatant. Always has. Always will. Now that’s an Inconvenient Truth. Nope, it’s all a video game nowadays.
• This is Vietnam Part 5. We’ve made Afghanistan “Our” war just as we made Vietnam ours. Neither the Afghan or Vietnamese military could stand up to their adversaries. Why? Because they’re not willing to die for Karzai!!

George Bush can/should burn in hell, but we are not at square one. We are at year eight.

Afghanistan is a mercenary war?? You have drank the kool-Aid. Afghans have no beliefs, faith or integrity? And Vietnamese aren’t really humans like us Christians? They are used to death? Utter BS. Why didn’t the Soviets just buy them off?

I doubt you were around in the early sixties, but Macrystal and most of the other Generals were — in Vietnam. They MUST win to in a lame attempt to rewrite History’s Verdict on Vietnam (if we’d just hung in there longer. BS) just as the Nazis attempted to rewrite WWI history by blaming the Jews and a host of scapegoats.

Don’t you get it? WWI, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were unnecessary.

Adios Mike