The James Webb Space Telescope is already making good on its promises. The NASA scientists and engineers behind the $10 billion project promised to astonish with visual depth and its first images give them reason to take a bow. When I look into the image of the Carina nebula where stars are being formed or a spiral galaxy, my untrained eye doesn’t see what the astrophysicists see; I look and am dazzled, only amplified because the experts too are dazzled.
We are not only viewing galactic fireworks millions of light years away, we witness some impressive social engineering in our own backyard, this planet: a superb display of coordination and cooperation between engineers — 20,000 of them — of various ethnicities, nationalities, religions, genders, sexual orientations and races. Most of them are passionate about their work and the images are beginning to validate those passions.
With all the fear-based distrust that seems to permeate our interactions, we can point to scientific marvels like this new telescope and ask how that level of unified effort is made possible. I think of the Large Hadron Collider, a similar marvel.
Do you too see some fundamental ironies at work here?
There is this beautiful synergy among our scientific elites, especially when that fusion of talent results in such technical feats as the James Webb Space Telescope. Yet we are social beings, and when it comes to the daily grind of making peace with those of different religious beliefs or national identities or economic systems or social systems, in no time at all heels get planted, indignant tempers surface and an overpowering righteousness takes hold.
I remember a conversation with a friend who could only resolve the moral conflict of being employed by a defense contractor by handing in his resignation. I handed in my resignation in 1999. That was my personal “crossroads” when I pleaded with the devil for my soul to be returned after having loaned it out in exchange for the pleasures of corporate gluttony. That sojourn to the netherworld was full of lessons though; one of which was the daily level of respect and social harmony our team of engineers enjoyed. Our team had engineers from Turkey, Mexico, Singapore, Hungary, Hong Kong and even one from Arizona — of all places.
I can’t help thinking of that positive group dynamic when the Webb images fill my screen. Images that remind me not so much of humankind’s grandiose quest for knowledge, but more the witnessing and participation in what it is like to find connection and cooperation with those raised to think and act according to their cultural prejudices. To watch indignance and righteousness magically evaporate at our group meetings, giving way to intellectual insights without egos necessarily needing to take credit for the win.
And there are more pleasant ironies coming our way. On Sept. 1, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina will be in Florida and onboard SpaceX for a flight to the International Space Station accompanied by two American astronauts and a Japanese astronaut. Russians and Americans have a good-natured habit of flying on one another’s spacecraft. What a mythical moment there will be when the American astronaut and cosmonaut Anna, side by side, view the blue planet from a dimension removed from the daily headlines.
NASA stopped just short of elevating their pulpit with their comment: “The station was designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from each space agency to function. No one agency has the capability to function independent of the others.” Let us say it for them: We are inspired by one another. We are humbled by what the universe has to teach us. If you are an ideologue, please leave or check your bags at the door.
The Webb telescope carries the tantalizing potential of locating other habitable planets. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy.”
Finding other signs of life in the universe? Can you imagine bumping into a harmonious world of intelligent, loving beings? A place where columnists don’t feel compelled to escape into fanciful flights of imagination every couple of weeks.
After years of globetrotting, Broadman finds himselfwriting from his perch on the Palouse and lovingthe view. His policy briefs can be found at US Renew News: usrenewnews.org.
