We’re not the centre of the universe
Discovering other life forms could be a real possibility when Nasa launches its latest telescope. Nathaniel Kahn talks about his latest documentary, Telescope, with Hannah McKee.
We’ve all had that moment – the one where you wondered if you were the star of your own The Truman Show.
Blame the human psyche, it likes to trick us into feeling that we are at the centre of everything, and the world is happening around us.
It was only 400 years ago, with the invention of the telescope, that scientists realised the Earth was not actually at the centre of the universe.
That discovery is the inspiration behind Telescope, the new Discovery Channel documentary, which focuses on the development of Nasa’s latest model, to be launched in 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary My Architect, about his father, architect Louis I Kahn, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, and won a Directors Guild of America Award for outstanding direction.
This time, Kahn focuses his efforts on the sky, and the people on the ground who have devoted their lives to a project that will literally change our view of the universe.
Through a mix of interviews, behind the scenes footage, diagrams, telescopic imagery, and archival material, Telescope explains a brief history of the telescope, what it has done for us, and why we should be excited about the upcoming launch.
More than US$8 billion (about $11b) has gone into the international project, which is 100 times stronger than its 1990 predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
Kahn – who has been fascinated by, and built, telescopes since he was a boy – predicts 2018 will mark the golden age of astronomy.
The Hubble showed us that black holes existed, and allowed scientists to predict the age of the universe at about 13.8b years old, but there is still a lot that we do not know, Kahn says.
What is the ultimate goal in creating these multi-billion-dollar telescopes? ‘‘The goal of all science really is to understand the universe and our place within it, who are we, where did we come from, where are we going, and how does it all work?
‘‘Why human beings are like that, I don’t know, other animals don’t appear to want to know all the answers, that seems to be fairly unique to human beings,’’ he says.
Because the new telescope has infrared capabilities – sensitive enough to detect a child’s night light from the moon – it will allow scientists to look back on the very origins of our universe.
It will also allow them to examine the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, to see if they have the qualities we associate with life.
Kahn hopes the more that humans realise we are not all that special in the universe, the more we might feel unified, and start taking care of each other and our planet.
‘‘It’s hard to shed those beliefs and realise that we are but a small planet that orbits around an ordinary star, in a corner of the galaxy, in a galaxy of 200 billion stars, in a group of a hundred billion galaxies.
‘‘For thousands of years, humans have thought that we were the pinnacle of creation, we still say the sun rises in the morning and sets at night. But I hope we are entering a new era where astronomy helps us to recognise our part, which honestly is just not that special.
‘‘I hope, as time goes by, we are able to recognise as a global community that we are just one small planet, and if we can’t get it together we’re not going to last.’’