This book by a New York author is all about the deployment and early use of the James Web Space telescope. Not only was it away over budget, but it didn’t launch until 2021, years after it was supposed to, succeeding the Kepler telescope, which was also long delayed and wildly over cost. This leads to the conclusion that the Habitable Worlds telescope planned for launch in 2040 will also likely be delayed and have billions of dollars added to its initial cost estimate.
I would be lying to claim that I understood more than a small fraction of the science detailed in spite of attending the first 3 lectures on astronomy put on by the WELU, (West End Learning Unlimited) organization, with 2 more to come shortly. There are literally hundreds of astronomers cited with remarkable discoveries of billions or trillions of planets, stars, asteroids, comets and exoplanets in an ever expanding universe, with even the universe as we know it being only one of seemingly many. The tentative discovery of dimethyl sulfite on the K-18 planet gained popular press coverage as a possible indication of life, but K-18 is 124 light-years away from earth, so even if real that says nothing about life elsewhere at present.
I did learn that astronomers assign colours to the photographs of the electromagnetic spectrum that they obtain and convert into visible light almost at random which goes some way to explaining why those photos seem so confusing and inconsistent to me.
It seems debatable to nonscientists whether or not expenditure of this magnitude is justifiable, given the seemingly unsolvable problems we have here on earth. However, the mysteries of the skies have preoccupied humans since before any even rudimentary understanding of them, and I am not one to decry expenditure on science of any kind. Even if nothing concrete comes from such endeavours, the enthusiasm and cooperation of astronomers from vastly different cultures is worthy of praise and a uniting force for humankind. I just wish I understood more of the physics and mathematics involved.
3/5
Thanks, Book Browse.
The Passionate Reader 