The Wayback Machine

I mean way, way, WAY back.

Are you as tired as I am of corporate “news” media that have become mindless enablers of narcissist Nazis all vying with each other to draw as much attention to themselves as possible by being as childish as possible? How about so called “social” media platforms that do the same? Or billionaires who combine the worst elements of Bertie Wooster and Pol Pot?

Are you, in short, weary unto death of an endless parade of media dedicated to humanity at its very worst?

Allow me to recommend Netflix’s Cosmic Time Machine. Part of the streamer’s Unknown documentary series, Cosmic Time Machine is the story of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST to its friends, of whom I am one). Orbiting the sun at the L2 Lagrange Point (an ideal position for a deep-space telescope), JWST has been sending back astonishing images of objects distant in both space and time for a little over a year now and making them available to the general public for free.

You can view and download them without giving away personal information to some soulless corporation or buying a checkmark or X or whatever from some egomaniacal billionaire. Because it’s funded by us, the taxpayers. It’s the sort of massive project that only an organization like NASA can achieve.

Webb can see into the deep past (as in billions of years) because the speed of light is a constant. It takes around eight minutes for light from the sun to reach us on Earth, for example. Hence the term light year, which (its name not withstanding) is a measurement of distance. To be exact, one light year is 9.4607 × 10¹² km, or almost nearly 6 trillion miles.

So when you see a deep field Webb image that shows a galaxy cluster that’s 4.6 billion light years away, you’re actually seeing what that galaxy cluster looked like 4.6 billion years ago, not what it looks like now. The deeper Webb looks, the farther back in time its vision goes. At this point, the vision extends almost to the so-called Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

Which is simply astonishing.

If you have Netflix and haven't seen Cosmic Time Machine yet, I strongly encourage you to do so.  It's a reminder of what top scientists and engineers who genuinely love their jobs and are committed to something bigger than themselves can—and did—accomplish. Despite overwhelming odds and attempts by the House of Representatives (dominated by the same party that is now obsessing about rainbows, Barbie, and M&Ms) to shut the whole thing down in 2011.

This is a story about what humans can achieve when they are genuinely trying to do something good for all of us and not just enrich and empower themselves. When they're motivated by something better than hate and fear. It's what we can do if we reject mindless tribalism. It's inspirational.

And true.

And it beats the hell out of watching some idiot politician fulminate about how much a doll scares him.