A moment of beauty

Friends, we're going through the wringer. It seems as if the world is spinning out of control. Bad actors want to burn down everything. People supposedly on "our side" are feckless and likewise want to torch all within reach. It's enough to make you want to crawl into a hole and await the end.

But then we have this:

This, my friends, is what the human mind and human will can do. This is one of the first pictures which NASA has released from the James Webb Space Telescope. You can read more about this particular image here.

Of course, us space and science fiction heads have been bouncing off the walls for the past couple of days as image after image comes through. For us, this was the most exciting revelation:

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.

The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away.

While the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres over the past two decades, capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks a giant leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

That the telescope could measure the atmosphere in this detail promises discoveries which humanity has only dreamed of. If it can detect water in the atmosphere, it can also detect signs of civilization, like pollutants. We might, before too long, have an answer to the question which has haunted us since we took our first fitful steps beyond our planet: Are we alone?

But more than that: this wonder of technology, this supreme achievement, was created by us, by we mere human beings. This is humanity's dichotomy: we can create weapons which can obliterate our species, and we can fashion tools which reveal the wonders of creation. We already had the godlike power to destroy; now we have an equal power to bring forth marvels.

What will happen when Webb discovers the first signs of intelligence out there, beyond the surly bonds of earth? We may never meet these creatures. But we will know they are there. We will know that the breath of complex sentience is not limited to our world. How will we react? Will we feel small and diminished? Or will we take in that we are in a web of life, not only on this world but enmeshed with countless worlds yet to be discovered?

We are so close to leaving our adolescence behind. Many want to hold us back. But the overweening drive in humans is to know. By knowing the universe we know ourselves. Those afraid of knowledge are a dying race. They will be left behind. They already are being left behind, which is why their irruptions of rage are so frequent and violent know. But to know oneself is to know eternity, and that is for what we strive.

For all the troubles we face, we are in an age of marvels. The scientists at NASA have reinfused a weary people with that sense of the joy of discovery. We await the unfolding of existence.