I regret to share that the images of the Webb telescope in newspaper pages and boring Augustus news bulletins have not changed my life, or even my worldview, without underestimating their immense decorative value. I can imagine rows of pottery based on these photographs, though I was sickened by my vulgarity when I read the New York Times headline, “How the Webb Telescope Expanded an Author’s Universe.” The clever newspaper made the galactic discovery: “While more images of Jupiter are pouring in from NASA’s new observatory, our cosmic affairs reporter admits that she didn’t anticipate its strength.”
If the greatest astronomical gossip of all time does not change your existence, you are insensitive. You actually have to surrender to the exquisite marketing of NASA, not to science. The agency is officially launching the massive storms, auroras, and buntings of the largest of the planets, with the observation that “There’s a lot going on on Jupiter.” The space agency speaks unashamedly about the “inner life of Jupiter,” which sounds like New Age spirituality but is as important to me as the biological evolution of my neighbor’s pottery shards.
The photographs that changed the lives of cultured people forever confirm that I belong to the illiterate circles where no one comments on the telescope views but where everyone is enthusiastic about Eurovision. We’re with the Web, Webb falls away. I’m not even sure we can separate Jupiter with images from Venus, or the slice of sun sausage popularized by French popularizer Etienne Klein, to show that space photos leave us speechless as we have no idea what they mean. Nor am I a hopeless philistine, for I am not attracted to those who exalt themselves with admiration for space, but I understand those who weep for the fallen or burned trees that make up the columnar row of their existence. Remember, Einstein or Hawking carried the universe in their brains and everything came from there.