Oh, if we could only display this editorial in the style of the scene-setting opening prologue during a Star Wars movie, when the letters and sentences scroll upward, as strong and undeviating as an Old Testament tablet, but then gone in a whisper. Or, that is, gone in a John Williams strings section winding down. From the moment George Lucas gave the world that opening crawl, he had most of the planet hooked on his story.
Most of this planet.
Something, there is, about the wonder of space. And the more Homo faber learns, the more wonderful it becomes.
It wasn't that long ago--the year was 1995--when an astronomer of some note had an idea that he wanted to test. His name was Dr. Robert Williams, and he wanted to point the Hubble telescope at an empty area of space. For 100 hours. The story goes that his colleagues sputtered. Why, that'd be wasting 100 hours of valuable telescope time!
And in 1995, the memory of Hubble as a hot mess was fresh on everybody's mind. Before it was fixed, it was just a blind eye in space, an expensive toaster orbiting the Earth. Why, it'd be another PR disaster for America's space program to waste several days looking at nothing.
Bob Williams was the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, so he got his way. It's good to be king.
National Geographic explained what happened next:
"So, with his job perhaps on the line, Williams went off, put together a small team of post-docs, and did exactly as he'd planned. For 100 hours, between Dec. 18 and 28, Hubble stared at a patch of sky near the Big Dipper's handle that was only about 1/30th as wide as the full moon. In total, the telescope took 342 pictures of the region, each of which was exposed for between 25 and 45 minutes. The images were processed and combined, then colored, and 17 days later, released to the public.
"It turned out that 'nothing' was actually stuffed with galaxies. More than 3,000 of them came spilling out, some roughly 12 billion years old. Spiral, elliptical, irregular--red, white, blue, and yellow--the smudges of light that leapt from the final composite image cracked the universe in ways scientists never could have imagined."
So that empty area of space contained more galaxies. Not stars, mind you, but whole galaxies.
For all we know, that story could have been the inspiration for the news last week. More than 200 scientists from 18 countries published a new map of the night sky last month. The new map contains 300,000 new galaxies.
How hubristic mankind can be. Even astronomers. These "new" galaxies aren't new at all, only new to our eyes.
The new map was put together using something called Low-Frequency Array, or LOFAR, technology. We're happy to tell you that we won't attempt to explain it much beyond this: It uses equipment that can detect light and radio sources that other instruments can't see or hear, and gather information that was once too faint to be spotted or heard from the Earth or near-Earth orbit.
It hasn't been even 100 years yet since a man named Edwin Hubble held a theory that there were other galaxies out there. And with the Hooker telescope, he discovered the next one over. Nowadays, astronomers think there may be more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Not stars, but galaxies. Each with (possibly) billions of stars in them.
Are we alone? Highly doubtful. Will we make contact? Also highly doubtful. Any exceedingly intelligent critter out there in a Goldilocks zone that has conquered time and space enough to want to make contact with this small blue planet has probably evolved far enough not to bother. Instead, its society is probably content with art and well-being. Maybe music and diversion. ET is probably reading a good book on a beach several billion light years away.
To read the articles about LOFAR in Astronomy & Astrophysics, you can visit www.aanda.org, and click on "special issues." Warning: The articles read like they were written by astronomers and astrophysicists.
Dispatches from our astronomer friends say to this point, with all of our equipment and knowledge, mankind has charted all of 2 percent of the sky. So more surprises await in the years to come. We look forward to the next time they point Hubble at a dead area of space.
That is all for today. May the force be with you, live long and prosper, and nanu nanu. And to the Hubble telescope: Keep your eyes open, old boy.
Editorial on 03/10/2019