Happy new year everyone.
Just before most of us rang in the new year, we successfully flew by a distant rock (Ultima Thule), one billion miles past Pluto and four billion miles from earth and, you know, took some photos.
News of that did not reach earth until the new year, since the signal took more than 8 hours to get here. We have a quick grainy photo but we’ll likely see higher resolution photos in the next day or two (more transmission and processing time). This is a rock that is so cold that it’s basically been frozen in time since the beginning of the universe (or at least the most recent “beginning”).
As you enter 2019, the word of the day is perspective.
