Telescopes Reveal a Hidden Universe
Five senses to create a reality
We live in a world that is constantly changing all around us. For life on Earth, being able to detect and respond to change is a critical aspect of survival.
Lucky for us, nature has equipped us with 5 major senses that help us detect the change in our surroundings.
Our brain takes the input from these senses, performs 10 trillion calculations per second, and then creates a story that becomes our perceived reality.
Phew, that’s a lot of information to process! No wonder the brain is the organ that consumes the most energy.
But…our brains are not perfect!
Our brains are often overwhelmed with the huge amount of information our senses provide. In order to process that data in a timely manner, our brain takes shortcuts known as cognitive biases. We ignore and even create data points in order to come up with our own version of reality. Given that our reality is shaped by our senses, it is not surprising to learn that we have a very egocentric view of the universe.
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published observations that contradicted the accepted version of reality, which held that our planet was the center of the universe. Later in 1632, Galileo Galilei confirmed and advanced Copernicus’s findings, but this challenge to the humancentric view of reality was met with severe resistance and Galileo was imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
A more humble version of reality
After Copernicus and Galileo, we got Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Edwin Hubble. After each of their scientific contributions, our collective reality was disrupted, each time taking humans farther away from the center of the universe.
How could we be so wrong about something as large as the universe?! Well, you can blame our eyes.
Our eyes, as incredible as they may seem, only have 3 types of cone cells that detect the color blue, red, and green. Similar to your iPhone, your eye combines those 3 colors to see the whole spectrum of visible light.
Unfortunately for us, the visible light spectrum is just a fraction of the light that exists in the electromagnetic spectrum!
Flowers don’t care if YOU think they are pretty!
We have been victims to our egocentric view of reality in every field of science. As history shows, when we supersede our human experience as the ultimate truth, we are actually missing out on the real beauty that surrounds us.
Sure, we can all admire a flower for it’s beauty on the visible spectrum that’s available to our eyes…but keep in mind that flowers have evolved for millions of years to attract the attention of bees, who see in the ultraviolet spectrum!
Under ultraviolet lights, we see flowers from the perspective of a bee and it transforms the flower into translucent target that reveals its “true” beauty.
Let’s look at another example in nature.
At first glance, the Bengal tiger looks like it evolved a pretty terrible camouflage. You’re not fooling anyone with that bright orange coat Tony. Not unless of course…you are a deer!
Deer do not see very well in the longer and middle wavelengths of the visible color spectrum. This means that deer are color blind for…you guessed it: ORANGE!
Can you see the tiger now?
From the tiger’s perspective it has the perfect adaptation for a stealthy hunter.
Telescopes reveal a hidden universe
Similar to flowers and tigers, most of the universe’s secrets can only be unlocked when viewed in a different wavelength. Humans have develop specialized instruments that can observe the universe in specific wavelength. For each telescope that we launch or build we reveal a new layer of the cosmos.
The first space telescope was launched in 1968, which means we’ve only had two generations of scientist with the necessary tools to explore the cosmos in different wavelengths!
In that short amount time however, we’ve discovered dwarf galaxies, run away stars, unimaginable explosions, million degree x-ray emitting gas, dark matter, super charged particles, faint blue galaxies, incomprehensibly big gas clouds called nebulas, cosmic radiation from the big bang and even mysterious quantum vacuum energy!
Now, let’s point our expensive space telescope at….nothing!
From Part 1 and Part 2, we’ve learned about the challenges and the extraordinary costs associated with launching a space telescope. For these reasons, the space observations are limited to the finite life of the telescope’s hardware and thus time on a telescope is highly sought after by universities, scientists, and even amateur astronomers.
In 1995, Bob Williams, the Director of the Space Telescope Institute, made the highly controversial decision to point the Hubble Telescope at a dark patch in the sky with absolutely nothing of interest for more than 100 hours.
Williams was heavily criticized by his colleagues who argued this was a complete waste of valuable telescope time. Williams doubled down and argued that “scientific discovery requires risks…and If it’s that bad, I’ll resign.”
When the images came back, scientist were in for a surprise. Hubble discovered more than 3,000…not stars…but GALAXIES!
This was an overnight sensation named the Hubble deep field. Our knowledge of the amount of galaxies in existence jumped to over 50 billion galaxies or 5x more than the previous estimate.
Our changing perception of reality
For thousands of years, human beings have looked to the stars in awe and mystery. We’ve created myths and a reality that placed us the center of it all. After each scientific discovery our collective reality changes…and with it…our place in the universe.
Since the Hubble Deep Field pictures described above, our estimate for the number of galaxies has grown to 100 billion. From these discoveries astronomers estimate there exist roughly 10,000 stars for each grain of sand on Earth. The number of galaxies is expected to increase to more than 200 billion as our telescope technology improves!
On the next part, I’ll cover what scientists look for when they search for habitable planets to answer one of our most intriguing questions: Are we alone in the universe?
As always, if you are a student and would like to join the space exploration industry, send us a note at Space United. We would love to help you, because our industry needs YOU!
Enjoy the content? Have suggestions? Do you have a question about space? Send me an email at:
Subscribe to get alerts for the next blog post…
About the author:
Sebastian Tobacia
Manufacturing engineer with nearly a decade of experience in the space exploration industry. He has led engineering projects at SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and currently works a manufacturing engineer for the New Shepard rocket at Blue Origin.
Sebastian is passionate about giving back to his community and working towards creating more equitable and inclusive STEM industry.
