In response to Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, I have been looking at my own newsfeeds.
A nice, benign story for the week before Christmas.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and for the last thirty years has been delivering images such as the Lagoon Nebula
(click through for the full res image – I promise it is worth it).
Well. just a note that Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Telescope, is due to be launched on Christmas Eve.
Everything about Webb is bigger and better. While Hubble’s mirror was “only” 2½ m (8′) in diameter, Webb’s optics include a 6½ m mirror – that’s over 20′!
At a cost of $10 bn, and at half the weight of Hubble, Webb also comes with an impressive array of infra-red sensors to look even deeper into the universe. It will be able not just to find planets outside of our solar system, but to analyse their composition. Not to mention just the thirty-year jump in technology which has seen us become a race reliant on microprocessors for every facet of our lives.
This all fascinates me, because it’s the area in which I studied, in which I started my career.
Never heard of James Webb? He was the chief of NASA during those key Apollo years (1961-8). I tend to see the science of a telescope as discrete from the engineering of a space rocket, but I guess NASA see a link, and this period was certainly its heyday.
Mister Bump 
Photo is incredible!
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The more I learn, the less I know. The infinity of space literally does my head in!
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When you stop and think about how many zeros are in the calculations it’s staggering
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Absolutely. Simply mind blowing!
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I used to find, it was like wearing two heads. On the one hand you do the mathand you’re either talking numbers which are infinitessimally small or infinitessimally large…
and on the other you have the real world.
And it really was like doing a Worzel Gummidge between the two. I’m quite good at compartmentalising so I was able to easily separate out the two. As a result I was good at astrophysics.
It’s the same with quantum mechanics. If you think of the concept, it blows your mind. But if you just do the math, it’s mostly easy peasy.
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I do find it all really interesting, but I get to a point where I have to stop otherwise my brains are fried. Fascinating though how you are able to compartmentalise.
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That explains why I can sit and use WP when the house is falling apart around me. Found dishwasher pipes chewed by rats this morning.
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It must do. Those dirty rats!
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Wow, that’s really interesting. I was thinking of studying astrology, but I’m probably to old to start it now
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ooh, be careful with your words. One’s an amazing science, the other is a pile of horseshit 🤣
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Yeah, but both have their place.
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This was fascinating ! Numbers are my dads thing. Space has always been a mystery to me
Maybe too many Alien movies 😁
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Infinite possibilities.
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Yes very true. You like that though no?!
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If you thought you were an insignificant spec on this earth before, I won’t even exist with this one. Amazing really
and the photo is mind-blowing.
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If you really liked it, nasa have a library with hundreds of images in it.
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