Happy New Year, Earthlings!

Freo Today. 1 January 2026. While we humans do our best to destroy Homo sapiens and every other living thing on our small remote planet Earth, New Year’s always gets one thinking about where we came from and why we keep on treating each other and the planet so badly year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium, and so on .

If we were all to stop just for a moment and take in the Hubble telescope’s image of the brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life – and resembling a glittering New Year’s fireworks display – we might just decide how utterly pointless and destructive of humanity and the human spirit conflict and war is.

This is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2 that resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.

20,000 light years is the distance you would go if you were travelling in a spaceship at the speed of light – 300,000 km every second – for 20,000 years. Almost incomprehensible.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team.

Happy New Year, Earthlings!