In the privacy of my favorite place to write I had to wait for the arrival of the inspiring muse for at least a couple of weeks to tuck me in again. Anyway, she finally arrived. I must confide to you, dear reader, the sorrow this provokes for the editorial delay towards our kind friends of Efectividad Consultores Perú, who have opened this labyrinth of letters and ideas to launch into space how much intra-human energy belongs to us by birth and by divinity.
The best of all is that inspiration finally appeared, just as Boisselier would say.
When it had to come, not before, not after!
Today, I want to express a couple of thoughts about a progressive way of observing the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope, a view that no man has ever had before. We see images in infrared light (imperceptible to the human eye) of the depths of our vast universe. Images that show us how Webb will help us discover the answers to the questions we don't yet know how to ask; questions that will help us better understand our universe and especially the place we as humanity occupy within it.
The incredible success of Webb's team is a reflection of what man does best. Taking dreams and turning them into reality. And this is just getting started.
We explore the unknown in space, and Webb's first observations tell the story of the hidden universe through every cosmic phase: from neighboring exoplanets to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe. This is a unique and historic moment. The first photographs are material evidence of what we can accomplish when we unite behind a common goal: Solving the cosmic mysteries that connect us all. This is a dazzling flash of human knowledge without a doubt.
The beautiful diversity and incredible detail of the images and telescope data that the telescope will provide will have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe and inspire us to dream big.
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on December 25, 2021, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana, South America.
Sorry, South America?
Well yes, the journey to the cosmos was sustained from the soil of the Americas. April 14, 1964 is written in history as the day of the consolidation of aerospace activity for the European Space Agency in the continent that saw the arrival of the Genoese in 1492.
And I couldn't help but get more excited and turn to Barry White, James Brown, Billy Paul, Bill Withers, The Manhattans to overflow with so much energy. We spend so much time discussing the vanities of human stupidity that we cannot realize even today that we are knocking at the very door of the origin of life and our existence.
Nothing has shocked man since the famous expression "A Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space".
We waste our limited life energies in knowing if Petro, Lopez or Maduro are communists and dictators, forgetting to look at that blue dot that Voyager gave us as our home. That is us, wrote Carl Sagan in 1994. "In it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever existed, lived his or her life there."
That image confronts us with a powerful recognition of ourselves, a recognition that never fails to move us. Because you know one thing dear reader, that little blue dot is the only place we can live, and we're making a mess of it.