A Picture That Makes Us Small And Big / Une image qui nous rend petits et grands
Hello All, I am pleased to share my article about Webb's first image, which was published yesterday (Sunday July 17, 2022) in Mauritius in a news weekly called l'Express Dimanche, in its original French at this link, and a translation in English further below. Enjoy!
A Picture That Makes Us Small And Big
By U. Shivraj Sohur
This image, a speck 4.6 billion light-years away from Earth known as SMACS 0723, was captured by the John Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever built by humans. For the world to gasp in wonderment, it was unveiled last week to President Biden in a ceremony at the White House by excited NASA scientists and administrators.
As pointed out, how JWST came into being is a remarkable story of human ingenuity and cooperation. It was developed over 2 decades, with contributions from thousands of scientists, engineers, and other professionals from more than 14 countries and a staggering price tag of $10 billion.
What Do You See?
And so we come to the picture. It shows a cluster of galaxies named SMACS 0723 (for Southern Massive Cluster Survey). Let me explain why on gazing at this picture, I feel like Pope Paul III, who fell to his knees in 1512, in awe, when he first saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling painting, ‘The Last Judgment’.
First, in the scheme of the universe, SMACS 0723 is stupendously small; from Earth, it is only visible in the Southern hemisphere, where our island is located. Imagine that one clear night you are standing on top of Piton du Milieu, smack in the middle of Mauritius. That day, you had been at the beach at Belle Mare and brought a grain of sand with you to the hilltop. If you were to place this Belle Mare grain of sand at the tip of your thumb pointing up with your arm stretched towards SMACS 0723, the grain would more than cover the area in the picture.
Second, consider how far from Earth SMACS 0723 is located. I was talking to my friend Taimur and we marveled that the distance is truly hard to put in perspective. I’ll try to unpack this fact as best as I can. Let’s talk about light and light-years. Light travels at 186,000 miles every second. How far is 186,000 miles? Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say we place a series of reflecting mirrors around Earth’s equator so that if you shine a laser light in one of the mirrors, the light travels around the globe and back to the original mirror where the light beam started, a distance of roughly 25,000 miles.
In one second, that laser light you are shining at the mirror will complete nearly 8 voyages around planet Earth; that’s how fast light travels. Thus, one second, the time it takes you to say, “ki pozisyon ?”, light can travel 8 times the circumference of planet Earth. Think about it now, before it hit the detector on JWST, the light from SMACS 0723 has been traveling the distance of 8 times the circumference of planet Earth every second, every day, every 365 days of the year for 4.6 billion years. That is 4 600 000 000 years, or 4.6 thousand million years. The distance covered in miles? A quick calculation reveals that SMACS 0723 is located about 3E21 miles from Earth. 3E21 miles means that you have to add 21 zeros at the end of 3 if you were to write it out in full, the distance in miles of SMACS 0723 from Earth.
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Third, and to me the most wondrous things of all; what do those shapes represent in the image? To make sense, let’s define celestial objects. The earth is a planet, which revolves around its star we call the sun. We are part of a galaxy we call The Milky Way. It is estimated that The Milky Way has 200 billion stars, some much bigger than the sun, some smaller. Now, because of JWST’s limit of detection, each of the shapes of light on the picture represents one galaxy. In the details, some of the shapes that you see are reflections because of the way the picture is captured.
A couple of other things to note. While we see flat picture, note that the shapes are spread out over a huge depth of field, just like when you take a picture, your friends may be in the middle ground, but there could be a building in the background, and say, some pigeons loitering closer to you as you are taking the picture in the foreground. Similarly, in general, the brighter and blurrier objects are closer to us, and the smaller dots are most likely farthest to us. In general, the whiter the color of the shapes, the younger they are; the oldest objects are colored red and middle aged objects are yellow. The red colored objects may be the age of the known universe, that is, close to 14 billion years old.
What Does It Mean?
Staring at this image makes me wonder, with such a huge number of celestial bodies, could we truly be alone in the universe? Are there other life forms? How do we find out who could possibly be lurking out there, waiting to be discovered in the undiscovered expanse? My limited mind cannot even begin to comprehend.
When I absorb what it means to be able to see these celestial bodies, I am overwhelmed by the realization of how small we are compared to the sweep of the universe, and yet, because we have the yearning to see more, how big we might become through our new knowledge. I turn to one of my favorite texts of why we should keep looking, keep discovering and keep questioning.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
Rig Veda, Book 10, Hymn 129
For me, in a most humble way, JWST and this picture embodies that spirit of questioning, of humanity at its best.
Shivraj Sohur lives in Boston, USA, where the night sky, because of light pollution, is not as clear as he remembers it in Espérance Trébuchet where he grew up. He will be visiting the country this week with his family and hopes to catch his childhood vision of the firmament.