I would argue, however, that the true feeling of awe, of being truly amazed and humbled by something, is as elusive as ever. An article in Psychology Today, intended to explain the reverence people felt for the feats of the 2012 Olympics, said that two things must happen for an event to be awe-inspiring: it must happen on a massive scale, and the moment must be has a profound effect on us, “forcing us to rethink the way we see the world.” Events of this magnitude do not happen often in a person’s life. However, we look for them: in the wild, in the stands of a sports arena, theater or concert hall, sitting on a meditation cushion or in a church pew, because these moments transcend the everyday, expand our understanding of life and , as the same Psychology Today article put it, change “our definition of what it means to be human” forever. And I think we can agree, can’t we, that the more awe-inspiring moments—that remind us that today’s problems don’t really mean much in the cosmic scheme of things—the better? We had one of those we-were-just-witnessing moments last week when NASA released five of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The scientific world was very excited by what they saw: the images from the $10 billion platform were sharper and better quality than expected. The Webb telescope also detected evidence of water vapor, haze and some unknown clouds around WASP-96b, a Saturn-sized planet, which could help reveal whether smaller bodies orbiting other stars are habitable. But did you see the other pictures? The blue and orange amoeba-like nebula, a dying star, emitting rings of gas and dust. The vortices of the Stefan Quintet, a tight cluster of five galaxies millions of light-years away. The world certainly let out a collective gasp at the sight of a distant star cluster called SMACS 0723, which has been hailed as one of the most profound images of the universe humanity has ever seen. I know I did, because my knowledge of the heavens can be summed up in a single fact: that when you look up at the night sky, you don’t see what you think you see. What I mean is that it takes so long for these distant images of stars, planets, clusters and nebulae to arrive that by then some of the celestial bodies have morphed into something else or may have completely faded to black. Although we think we are watching something immediate, like the 6 o’clock news, what we have before us is something ancient, like the oldest home movie ever made. Webb’s infrared capabilities and larger mirrors allow it to penetrate cosmic dust and see distant light further back in time than any previous telescope.
Deep implication
The light from SMACS 0723 is thought to have originated 13.8 billion years ago, a number so unimaginably distant it makes my head swim. So is this: when we look at this image, we’re seeing light captured just after the Big Bang, the event believed to have created the universe about 14 billion years ago. The implication of this fact is somewhat profound: when we look at this huge cluster of stars, surrounded by arcs of light from the previously undetectable galaxies behind SMACS 0723, we are looking back almost to the beginning of time, bringing us perhaps as close as we will always be, in the words of the poet, to touch the face of God. This idea is too much for me. Then again, so is the most startling of the first batch of Webb images: the Carina Nebula, which a New York Times writer said “looked like a looming, eroded coastal rock dotted with hundreds of stars that astronomers had not seen never before”. Looking over this cliff, into infinity, it is impossible, at least for a minute, to think about earthly things, such as the high cost of filling a gas tank, or even the evil that is happening in Ukraine. When I look at it, I feel the same way Tim Doucette, owner of the Deep Sky Eye Observatory in South Quinan, Yarmouth County, did when he was looking at the Webb telescope images this week. “Who knows what we’ll discover?” said Doucette, an amateur astronomer who is legally blind but can see objects in the night sky with amazing clarity, which is awe-inspiring in itself. “Maybe, some new physics, planets with life on them. We’ve only had telescopes in space for 50 years. We’re just scratching the surface of what we might discover if we don’t blow ourselves up.” What an idea. What a time to be alive.
