Reimagining ourselves in the cosmos

A year with JWST

A year ago the James Webb Space Telescope wowed the world with its first set of images. We were all gawking in awe together at the spectacle of our universe. Over the last year the telescope has achieved remarkable things, we’ve looked further back in time than ever and captured the deepest deep field covering a small patch of sky that revealed over 45,000 galaxies. We discovered a carbon molecule in another planet's atmosphere in another solar system, a first for humans. We gazed at thousands of miles long plumes of water on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and detected the oldest galaxies we’ve ever seen. With every piece of news I feel I have new eyes.

The science community always said JWST would fundamentally change what we know about the universe and would upend many of our notions of how things worked–really great science often does that–it’s part of the joy of discovery. And a year on, it’s true, this telescope and the scientists using the data have done just that, made us all reimagine our universe. But it’s also made us reimagine ourselves. 

With images containing over 45,000 galaxies–many of which are so vivid you can see their crisp crimson and cerulean bodies twisting and hovering in frozen blackness–it can be too much for any person to comprehend. Our universe is simply too unfathomable and that inability to wrap ourselves around it fully, can almost feel like a separation, isolating in its alienness. It’s why exploration of this level demands something deeper of us, to expand ourselves and our own ideas of what we think it means to be human.

Moments like that first image release and the subsequent announcements are remarkable even though we might take them for granted these days–we did just celebrate the 33rd birthday of the Hubble Space telescope. The science from these missions is incredible, but it’s not just the science that moves me, it’s the effort by the people involved. What is not so inspiring about humans who dedicate their lives to asking the big questions, to those who are devoted to finding even just small pieces of the answers? In a world like ours, with pain like ours, we need these reminders more than ever–– that despite it all, we are still capable of reveling in the wonder of the cosmos. 

I feel more and more as our despair grows in this world, having a sense of true discovery is a gift beyond measure. And while we will never get to travel to these distant ancient places, most of which are so old that they no longer exist, this exploration can still serve as fuel for us–a source of hope amidst a growing angst and ennui seemingly serving as a constant backdrop of our lives. Fortunately, we live in a golden age of astronomy, one where our access to the cosmos is richer than many could have ever dreamed. JWST and Hubble are working in tandem, and the legacy of many dead spacecraft are still delivering science from beyond the grave. 

We are the recipients of unspeakable beauty. But, these images and the data are also revealing an ever expanding universe, one more vast and distant than our wildest imaginations and in doing so might make some feel more alone. What are we to do in a universe so big? Where in one view we are a tangible world with milky clouds and cobalt seas, and in the next we are just a speck. Move just a bit further out and we are just one star amongst billions, and one galaxy amongst trillions. But do we also feel as though we disappear just because of our smallness? Or does this vantage point beckon us to rethink how we see ourselves amongst the fabric of things? As a celestial member of a community. We are after all a part of this universe, and to be a part of something is one of the most valuable things we can ever hope for. 

Humans have a long embedded biological drive to belong, for social reasons it can mean the difference between survival and death. To belong, to be a part of something means to live, to have the opportunity to work, to find love, to flourish. What would it mean then if we just reframed this perspective, knowing that just because we can no longer physically see the little blue dot, to know that it is still very much there. That we are there, together. 

To me, that is where a lot of this unsaid magic lies. We are not only discovering each other out there, but when anyone, child or otherwise learns of something so remarkable that they instinctively turn to someone to share it, that is the awe produced by this exploration.  When you look up at the Moon on an evening walk, or at an image full of darkness that is littered with rainbows of starlight, that feeling, that urge to tell someone-–that’s it. Because it is not just your Moon, or your image with a dusting of galaxies, it’s everyone’s and that reminder that we all belong to the cosmos is the gift we can choose to keep giving. 

The novelist Daphne du Maurier once wrote, “If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.” For me that is what a telescope does, it resurfaces a deep unknown part of our shared history and anytime we want to open that bottle, we can. 

We only really die when we fail to interlock our stories together, when we stop looking for connections. To be a human in this world is the most perplexing thing. We are born without any say, we grow and age and do our best to love ourselves and each other. We try to learn, to find jobs, to suss out our passions, to make good use of the limited time we have here. The mundaneness of our quotidian existence can often cloud the majesty of our lives, that we are small miracles standing in lines at CVS joking about the absurd length of the receipts. The same small miracles riding crowded subways and making music in the streets. The same small miracles waking up everyday with questions and trying our best to answer them. 

At some point in our story, we transformed from animals whose sole purpose was to survive, to animals whose purpose is to survive and to also find a purpose, to find meaning because without it, the thought of us being here without much to attach to it is simply too painful a thought to bear. So, when we decide to explore, whether that be on land or in space, if it’s done with the true and honest questions at the core, whatever comes back to us can quell that angst just a little. To me, this kind of discovery does that, it feels a lot like love. To watch humans look up and reflect back on our ancient home, a world that looks very different from us now, but we shouldn’t have to sparkle with starlight to know where we come from. “A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming,” Bell Hooks said. “This is the most precious gift true love offers–the experience of knowing we always belong.”

Yes we are the universe calling ourselves home, but we are also much more than that. We are performing an act of love by bearing witness to each other, to our cosmic story. Telescopes and the discovery asks of us something we are perhaps not prepared to answer–what does it mean to be human in this grand universe? Maybe it is simply that in the act of asking questions that we find ourselves aching and trembling and loving. That after billions of years of destruction and rebirth, after eons of chance in our favor, we find ourselves here, tender curious clusters of starlight learning to love the questions themselves.