2022: A Space Odyssey
The James Webb Space Telescope has released a tidal wave of existential awe
Human nature changed on July 12, 2022. Ok, scratch that. A collective wave of existential wonderment hit humanity as NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the space gizmo that’s infinitely swankier than its well-loved predecessor, the Hubble. It took all of 20 minutes for our feelings of cosmic insignificance to take the form of lowbrow memes, transplanting the deep infrared imagery from space onto such earthly staples as one’s Gulf-based chacha’s shiny granite flooring, and the dance floor of ’80s pop hit Yaar Bina Chain
Kahaan Re. Some humans design telescopes that bring celestial bodies from billions of years ago into focus. Others conflate them with Bappi Lahiri disco hits. I’m so grateful for both varieties.
Astro-erotica
The first day, we didn’t really know what we were seeing. Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723—which sounds like the full form of a Samsung phone model—is “the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date,” NASA informed us. I turned to space dude Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Twitter feed to understand what I was looking at. He told me to ignore the spiked stars—they were merely stars from our own galaxy, the instantly downgraded Milky Way. “Everything else is an entire galaxy. Many distort into arcs, revealing spacetime curvature from the gravity of a galaxy cluster in the image’s center.”
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I don’t know about you, but astrophysics-speak is my idea of erotica. Something about the madly distant yet supremely significant ignites the lit major in me like nothing else. True to form, I wrote an insignificant poem marking the moment we saw that first picture from over 4 billion years ago, ending with the words:
Once upon a time, a cosmos exploded into being without any plausible reason, smiling for a camera it never knew would exist.
The starry night
By the next day, when colourful new pictures of the distant past had been released, social media had melted into one big puddle of spaceflavoured tears. Allama Iqbal’s Sitaaron se aage jahaan aur bhi hain/Abhi ishq ke imtihaan aur bhi hain graced the Insta stories of Hindustani poetry lovers, even as Anglophiles remembered Auden’s Let The More Loving One Be Me with all its talk about the love of dying stars.
Art is how we humanities-types make sense of physics and metaphysics. Or rather, it’s the language we use when confronted with concepts as inscrutable as time, space and Sushmita Sen’s romantic
choices. Van Gogh’s The Starry Night; David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Life on Mars; and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey all use a cosmic canvas to paint a human story. Folk and tribal artists, from the Aboriginal Australians to the Dogon of west Africa, have for centuries kept the stars close through their art. With social media allowing us to make our own juxtapositions, it’s been fun to see the new/old pictures of the cosmos unfold in such a personalised manner. I’ve skipped the space Reels, but I’m sure they now outnumber the stars in a small galaxy.
How does it matter?
So, what’s been the big takeaway from all these unprecedented shots of the faraway universe? To me, it’s been such a vivid reminder of the fact that I’m looking at the past whenever I stare at the stars. In all our anxiety about the future, with its twin burdens of environmental and moral degradation, here’s a crystal clear view of a faultless yesterday. These dazzling pictures are now my go-to thought whenever I’m feeling inadequate. Haven’t kept in touch with that school friend? Still haven’t cleaned that cupboard? Haven’t made it to any Top 40 under 40 list? Doesn’t matter. Look how old and vast the universe is and how insignificant my failings.
In an idyllic past, heavenly bodies danced without anyone accusing them of controlling events on earth. And yet, it’s humans, too, who have developed the science to see what occurred way before they had even evolved as a race! Now that’s worthy of serious applause. Hopefully, our species, that has its sights set on the events following the Big Bang, will soon find a way to predict the weather, Virat Kohli’s return to form and Ranbir Kapoor’s next hit accurately.