A very dear friend of mine turned forty-six yesterday and was a bit dismayed at finding himself no longer equidistant to forty and fifty but decidedly closer to fifty. I considered making the old joke list of things older than he: fire, the wheel and dirt. However, it might have ruined the warm chocolate cake and mocha marscarpone parfait we were enjoying.

Luckily, yesterday news also broke about the oldest galaxy in the known universe which is dated to 600 million years after the big bang and seen so far back in time that it’s light took 13 billion light years to reach us. So, here is something much older than fire, the wheel, dirt AND my friend.

It’s called UDFy-38135539. The UDF is for Hubble’s “Ultra Deep Field.” And they expect that discoveries of even older galaxies will occur so no matter how old my friend gets, he will always be relatively young.