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Science Geeks Celebrate Newest Images of the Universe [1]

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Date: 2022-07-13

The light from galaxy SMACS 0723 in this image is 4.6 billion years old.

Note: This post is especially for people who have been fascinated by stars, constellations, the nighttime sky, and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life since childhood, but that may include everybody.

I won my fifth grade science fair with a working model of a steam engine, attended the Bronx High School of Science in the 1960s where instead of doing school work I read a lot of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Poul Anderson were my favorites, and while in college I spent a month in California’s Klamath National Forest searching for evidence of Big Foot. In 1972, I drove a van packed with teenagers from a summer camp outside Kingston, New York to Prince Edward Island in Canada to view a total solar eclipse that lasted for about five minutes. The next total solar eclipse visible in North America will be April 8, 2024. Totality should pass over the Pennsylvania-New York border near Lake Erie and I plan to be there.

In the 1980s, I applied for the ill-fated teacher-in-space program and fortunately wasn’t selected. I think string theory is untestable and its proponents get Einstein all wrong, you can’t make the universe squeeze into your mathematical equations. I’ve even written a book about the impact of climate changes across history and the threat of the continued use of fossil fuels on human civilization. Although I am an academic historian, I think these experiences qualify me as a life-time science geek.

This introduction is the long way around to explain why I was watching when President Biden introduced the world live on the NASA online television station to the first image of the universe captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. It showed light emanating from distant galaxies that took 13 billion years to reach Earth. The universe is only between 13 and 14 billion years old so these galaxies are at the furthest reaches of space. NASA uploaded additional pictures the next morning on its website. We now know that galaxies contain billions of stars and that there are billions of galaxies. I’m not sure how many potentially habitable planets there are orbiting those stars, you will have to do the math yourself, but there must be a real lot.

The James Webb Space Telescope took about thirty years of research and planning and cost about $10 billion to construct and launch into orbit where the Earth’s atmosphere would not interfere with its probing of outer space. It is named after James Webb, NASA's second administrator. The satellite, telescope and mirror was built by Northrop Grumman, Ball Aerospace, and L3Harris. It weighs 13,584 lbs. and is 66 feet by 46 feet. The “mirror” that actual collects the infrared images of space not visible to the human eye is 21 feet around and consists of 18 4 foot in diameter hexagonal (six-sided) tiles. It was launched into orbit around the Earth in December 2021 on a European Space Agency rocket from French Guiana on South America’s northeastern coast.

The first image made public by NASA (shown above) was of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 which is 4.6 billion light years away from Earth. Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, so that is really far away.

Science, with its commitment to questioning, reason, evidence, and experimentation is humanities greatest achievement and brings us both awe and hope in times of turmoil. Scientific innovation is a universal human phenomenon since the earliest human bands invented stone tools and agriculture at multiple sites across the globe. Golden Ages in different civilizations included major scientific advances. Early civilizations invented calendars, developed math, created tools that made it possible to build monumental structures that stand today. During the Tang dynasty in China (618-907 AD), scientists developed medicines and during the Song dynasty (960-1250 AD) invented gunpowder, the compass, and printing. During the Islamic Golden Age, at approximately the same time as the Song dynasty, science flourished, especially in the fields of astronomy, chemistry and medicine, and there were major breakthroughs in understanding and treating disease. Today scientists take the lead in efforts to combat epidemic diseases, control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and reverse the impact of climate change to prevent an impending climate catastrophe.

While one photo from the Webb telescope suggests water, clouds, and an atmosphere on a “hot, puffy gas planet” orbiting a Sun-like star located over 1,000 light-years away but within our Milky Way galaxy, I was a little disappointed that the Webb images don’t provide stronger evidence of life on other planets or discover wormholes, short cuts through space-time that would permit intergalactic travel, but I really didn’t expect them to and I continue to be hopeful. There are already more than 5,000 confirmed planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way alone. My high school and college friend Dr. Frank Hill, who is an astrophysicist, reports that according to some estimates “there is one civilization per galaxy on average, so in that case we are looking at thousands of them.”

While I am not a scientist, I remain committed to a scientific way of thinking, I hope these other civilizations are smarter and less destructive than we are, and I am proud to be a life-time member of the science geek brotherhood.

Follow Alan Singer on twitter at https://twitter.com/AlanJSinger1

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/13/2110216/-Science-Geeks-Celebrate-Newest-Images-of-the-Universe

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