Month: July 2023

From Mock Paper Scissors:

This picture is from the James Webb Space Telescope and it depicts the birth of stars:

The first anniversary image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it's never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you'd never know it from Webb's chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.

I know everything is terrible and we're all doomed, and the Republican Treachery (is that redundant?) or Stupidity (definitely redundant) will never end and we're totally eff'ed in the dark, but this picture smacked my gob, and gave me just a tingle of the original Star Trek 1960s optimism. Y'all Qaeda and their theocrat supporters all say we are fallen angels and that Gawd hates us sinners and blah-blah-blah, but I prefer to think that Sir Terry's Risen Apes theory is better.