Webb telescope photos teach us about the past, and ourselves
This image released by NASA on Tuesday shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Credit: AP
Perhaps you were among the universe of gawkers this past week, gobsmacked by the photos beamed back to Earth by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The unveiling was quite the event. Astronomers exploded into cheers like groupies. Nobel laureates professed astonishment at "seeing things I never dreamed were out there," as one put it. The images blazed across TV and the internet, part of astrophysics publications and the nightly news.
And why not.
The science part of this is astounding, the mathematics of distance and time hard to wrap one's mind around. What it tells us about our humanity is clear, but no less profound.
The new telescope nearly didn't happen. It took some 30 years and $10 billion to build, going over time and over budget. Congress nearly canceled it in 2011. It lifted off last Christmas morning, and unfurled itself a million miles away. Now the time and money seem a pittance.
Its long road reminds us of the value of stubborn perseverance. Its echoes course through the mathematician who labors on a solitary proof, the chemist who endlessly experiments, the archaeologist who digs through acres of dirt and rock, the musician who rehearses when no one else can hear, the basketball player who takes shot after lonely shot. Excellence is rarely quick.
If you've seen only one image, it's probably the one containing thousands of lights speckling on a pitch-black background. Some are bright, some dim, some large, some pinpoints. But the lights aren't individual stars. They're entire galaxies, thousands of them, as they existed 13 billion years ago. Now consider that our own dear Milky Way, just one among those thousands of galaxies, has as many as 400 billion stars and planets. Do the math.
On Monday, President Joe Biden released one of the James Webb Space Telescope's first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO
As you stare into this photo, you believe you can comprehend this huge expanse of space. But it's actual tiny, in astronomical terms. Scientists trying to explain it to simpletons like me propose taking a grain of sand and holding it at arm's length, then comparing that grain to everything in your field of vision. That's the scope of that photo.
Faced with such immensity, there is no choice but to admit our insignificance and recognize the hubris of thinking that we humans are alone in our sentient existence. In this infinity of possibility, how can that be? This is humbling, but also inspiring. It should fill us with gratitude, but also pride.
We might be but a small part of this magnificent canvas, and we don't yet understand all its workings. But we also built and sent this tennis court-sized telescope out to help us learn more. And even as we revel in these images of beauty and chaos and forces beyond our ken, we also realize that our isolation means we are dependent on one another for our survival.
There will be other photos to come, and other tests that will be done. We'll understand better how galaxies formed and what emerged from the Big Bang itself 13.8 billion years ago. That's audacious stuff.
But it's what we humans do, and have done for as long as we've been around.
From our origins, we've been explorers — determined to see what was on the other side of the mountain, down the river, across the desert, at the ocean's end, in the deepest jungle, at the bottom of the sea, at the top of the tallest peak. But for eons, our yearning to learn what was out there as we gazed at the heavens eclipsed our ability to discover it. Now we're getting a bit closer.
As you imagine the Webb in orbit way out there, understand that it's more than a collection of mirrors, shields and scientific instruments.
It is us, ever reaching for more.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
