(download CBS app for free viewing).
“After 27 years in space, the Hubble Space Telescope is sending back some of its most beautiful and revealing images from across our vast universe”. Bill Whitaker Reports
These images reach back billions of light years beyond what we see with our naked eyes. Astrophysicist Amber Straughn points to an area in space just above the Big Dipper to a blank piece of sky where Hubble has stared for a very long time. This allows photons to continually collect onto the detector, revealing some 10,000 galaxies 22 years ago.
Now with upgrades and enhancements Hubble looks deeper and longer into space. Every point of light is a single galaxy within its own single universe. Hubble now reveals the size of the universe could be filled with more than 2 trillion galaxies; 10 times more than previously thought.
If a typical galaxy like ours has 1 billion stars (suns), there would be 200 sextillion stars (suns) in the visible universe (2 with 23 zeros. Equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. Most stars have planets orbiting around them.
[“It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man’s insignificance in the long eternity of time; the deserts speak of his significance right now”. -Edwin Way Teale, “Autumn Across America (Dodd, Mead)]
The Hubble is a “Time Machine”. Adam Reese, (Nobel prize for work on Hubble) studies supernovae (exploding stars), explains this light travels to us from 10 billion years ago, before the existence of earth. In the last 1 billionth of 1 percent of that journey Hubble’s aperture door opened just in time to catch it.
The age of the universe is 13 billion years. The birth of stars and baby planets come from the gasses and dust from these supernovae. Stars are born inside these dust clouds. There is this “constant celestial [miraculous] regeneration”. Dying stars explode and send their content into the surrounding universe, feeding future stars and planets, and ultimately help to seed life. The iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones was literally forged inside of a star. “So we are literally made of star dust, we are viscerally made from the stars.
In 2019, the larger James Webb Telescope will launch, and will reveal images as far back as the beginning of time.
My comments: As an artist and retired educator, I want to know more; I have many questions and this is extremely exciting to learn about. These numbers are difficult to comprehend. Our desire to understand more about our world and beyond, and our ability to find the answers to improve our lives seems endless and insatiable. The existing STEM program in education does much to encourage our youth to study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; but let us not forget the individuals innate ability to reason, problem solve, and synthesize disparate elements. To develope a vision, an imagination, and creativity. One needs to go beyond the discovery of all these facts, and absolutes. Astronaut Leland Melvin and I believe the Arts would add STEAM to STEM.
Ed Praczukowski, "Cosmic Place III", 1970, Acrylic on canvass 38"X 50". Image on Flickr
http://hubblesite.org/
