Vastness Of Universe

Dixya Poudel

On July 11, 2022, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released first images taken by a new space telescope which immediately garnered the attention of the world. The telescope that took space images is called the James Webb Space Telescope. The $10 billion telescope was launched last December from French Guiana, South America and reached 1.6 million kilometers from Earth in January 2022. Then it proceeded to align its mirrors, cool infrared detectors and calibrate its scientific instruments while being protected by a huge sunshade. 

According to HuffPost, “NASA wants to use the telescope to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the early days of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.” James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to Hubble Space Telescope that was successful but aging. And Webb can look backwards in time as the light from billions of years ago reached it. This is a huge deal and one that the scientific community is quite excited about. All eyes were trained on the images taken by Webb and people’s reactions were filled with astonishment. 

The images are the farthest the world has seen in time and distance across the universe. And they are enthralling. It isn’t thus surprising that viewers said they could look at the images for hours, mesmerised. Like the rest of the world, I too spent a lot of time viewing NASA’s released images and Googling the science behind it. It brought a new light to the vastness of universe and its breathtaking splendor. Having grown up with sci-fi movies about space travel, I was awed to see ‘deep field’ images of space, pictured like never before.

 Certainly science is incredible in its scope and to realise that these pictures showed universe from billions of years ago is humbling. We are only a tiny speck in the depth of universe and quite puny in comparison. Moments like these make us wonder about the cosmic world and how we are an integral part of it.

Life on earth is valuable and yet quite precarious. And there are inexplicable questions to this existence. People have been pondering on mysteries of the universe for centuries taking a lead from religion to science. They have attributed conspiracy theories and supernatural elements to the wonders of the universe. Centuries ago, people believed that the sun revolved around the earth and that earth was the centre of the universe. However, this belief was shattered by the Copernican theory which established that it is earth that revolves around the sun. 

Since then, there have been many novel discoveries about the earth and the universe that continue till date. Scientists throughout decades have been working methodologically and empirically on various phenomena which is why they have been successful in making new discoveries. The world wouldn’t be where it is if scientists, inventors and innovators didn’t ask improbable questions and went on to test possible answers. 

Thanks to them, we know a little more about the universe than we did before. Yet, there is still much to discover. Space isn’t the final frontier. Scientific communities take pride in their relentless pursuit in unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The Webb Telescope has travelled the universe and its results have certainly awed the entire planet.