[isaacg]

This article is about two galaxies which we are seeing as they appeared 300-400 million years after the big bang (over 13 billion years ago).

Those galaxies are magnified to the point where they are visible by another, much closer galaxy cluster, which is only 3.5 billion light years away.

[dfee]

Two amazing things:

1. these photos have been traveling for 13.5 billion years, just to meet their fate smashing into the JWST.

2. how many photons must have been emitted, that a sphere 13.5 billion light years in radius can still resolve the image.

[capitainenemo]

Well, due to the massive gravitational lensing from the intermediate galaxy a few billion years away, I guess it's not actually a perfect 13½ billion light year sphere right... It's a fair chunk of the photons in the 10 billion light year sphere swept up and focused over a vast area and pointed in our direction.

Still amazing to think about though.

[function_seven]

I get the same amazement when I think about an ant I see on a tree five feet away. A photon was born somewhere in the middle of the Sun thousands (or more) years ago. It eventually made its way to the surface and—at extreme improbability—it traveled directly toward Earth. With more extreme improbability, it found itself on an intercept course with a tiny little ant on a tree.

Layer on yet another high improbability, that photon-ant collision just so happened to send it directly toward me. Wait, not just me, but the tiny little pupil in one of my eyes!

Tremendously large numbers and crazy minuscule fractions can be found in your backyard. Don't even need to leave the Solar System.

[floxy]

The radius of the universe is closer to 46 billion light-years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe