Yesterday I looked at pictures taken by Hubble in deep space. Absolutely gorgeous stuff. Contemplating the size of the universe and how time and light bend is really incomprehensible to me. Although, after some wine and talk with DPR last night, I actually asked that "now" question. "Is now really now?" It's hard not to consider it after looking at those photographs and thinking about light years. Who will be gazing at our light a million years hence from some distant galaxy? What romantic notion of time will they have? But I know it really doesn't matter a whit. I know that as much as I know I am more than half way on my way to mingling my dust with cosmos. Allen Ginsberg once noted many years ago-- after scribbling down his intoxicated epiphanies that seemed revelatory at the moment-- that they were pure gibberish in the morning. My attempts at understanding time seem fanciful in the morning light, but cosmological study of the origins of the universe is not gibberish. Looking at these photographs is like peeking at things our ancestors could never even imagine. With NASA poised to let the Hubble fall into disrepair and obsolescence, it is worth looking at what its aging telescopes reveal. If it doesn't make you contemplate the universe and our roles in it, I don't know what will Hubble Photographs
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