Listening to scientists wax euphoric about images from this James Webb telescope, you’d be forgiven for thinking that science has suddenly become all about the evidence of things not seen.
Because the disconnect between the nothingness these images show and the being these scientist are raving about smacks of Donald Trump telling his MAGA supporters
What you’re seeing and what you’re [hearing] is not what’s happening.
(The Hill, July 24, 2018)
When Jean Paul Sartre penned Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, he could not have imagined it having this cosmic implication. But I hate to break it to you folks, the evidence is clear: Beyond our being here on Earth, nothing lives out there in the universe.
So color me cynical. But my reaction to these images is: Big whoop-de-friggin’-doo!
Because, truth be told, I am more interested in seeing stars shining in the eyes of millions dying of starvation here on Earth than in seeing them shining in galaxies forming way back in time… I mean, just think of all the good we could do down here with the $10 billion wasted on this star-gazing enterprise. I’ve heard of reaching for the moon and settling for the stars. But this is ridiculous.
Even worse, we’ve been here before…
Because my cynicism is informed by the fact that these same scientists were waxing equally euphoric about images from the Hubble and SALT telescopes. I was so inclined to be impressed that I commented on the latter in, “SALT: South Africa’s Giant Leap into the Stratosphere of Technology!” December 23, 2005, as follows:
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The truly remarkable feat of the SALT is that, from its position on earth (in the Northern Cape), it gives us a direct view of celestial images and formations that rival the wonder and majesty of anything the Hubble space telescope beams back to us from its satellite perch orbiting the earth. For the more astronomically inclined, however, President Mbeki himself assures that the SALT will answer such fundamental questions as:
- What was the universe like when the first stars and galaxies were forming? [Indeed, the origin of the universe]
- What kind of worlds orbits other suns?
- How are the stars in nearby galaxies different from those in the solar neighbourhood?
- What can these stars tell us about the scale and age of the universe?
- How do quasars and gamma rays outshine trillions of stars like the sun?
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But that was 17 years ago! So why are these same scientists peddling similar images from the James Webb telescope as if those questions were never even asked, let alone answered…?
As even former US president George W. Bush would (try to) say, fool me once, NASA, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.