The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Christmas Pre-Record

00:00:00.000 can we talk about the james webb space telescope i want to talk about the james webb space telescope

00:00:04.540 real quick that's fine by me cool i think it is the best thing ever isn't that what exactly what

00:00:12.320 you say in this article that we've got not this one i wrote another one oh okay when it launched

00:00:16.940 i wrote an article calling it the best thing ever i quite literally exactly mean that uh it's the

00:00:23.300 best thing human hands have ever created is whenever you talk about it it's the most you

00:00:28.060 ever seem like you're back to being a child in a toy shop no definitely i do have um some sort of

00:00:34.880 childlike wonder yeah and i don't mean that as an insult but no no i don't i mean it's good to see

00:00:39.800 the sort of enthusiasm because in these sorts of times there's it's difficult to get excited about

00:00:44.860 things this is a white pill yeah no black pills for me today um so as i mentioned actually in one of my

00:00:52.580 last seconds uh man mankind is a tool building ape like whether it was something in the order of

00:01:00.400 three million years ago some sort of ape which isn't even true homo sapien at some point realized

00:01:07.000 it could use tools i mean even modern chimpanzees and bonobos and um orangutans use very very very

00:01:14.700 rudimentary tools sometimes like use a little stick to poke down into a termite or ant mound and to get

00:01:20.300 them out and then eat them things like that that's still clever compared to most animals yeah right

00:01:24.920 yeah so at some point three odd million years ago do you ever see the film uh 2001 a space odyssey

00:01:32.100 of course when they show that like some sort of uh ape um using like the jawbone of a dead animal or

00:01:38.240 maybe a thigh bone or something and yes that is the precursor to all invention and modern creation

00:01:44.400 was in all likelihood um development of weapons and that was just finding something that would give

00:01:50.560 you an edge over the next tribe over i mean simplified there's a meme that i see every so often

00:01:56.220 which is of a um ancient man-like ape holding a rock and it just says too bad food chain i've just

00:02:03.640 learned how to throw a rock yeah you're all screwed now well because you say weapons but that's just a

00:02:11.200 tool isn't it yeah so it's just a tool at some point the ape creature our ancestor realized it

00:02:16.680 could manipulate the environment around it it didn't just have to merely exist with whatever

00:02:21.940 the elements through it it could actually manipulate the world in some small way um fast forward to now

00:02:29.680 and we've got space telescopes i do think they're well they're sort of the most precise instruments

00:02:34.740 we've got by some way and there are dozens or have been certainly dozens and dozens and dozens

00:02:42.660 of space telescopes people will almost certainly have heard of hubble and maybe a few others like

00:02:47.420 spitzer or something but if you go on wikipedia and look up the list of all the ones that have ever

00:02:51.660 been all the ones that's gone up there's dozens dozens dozens is there one near manchester

00:02:55.920 a space telescope near manchester no no i must be misremembering something because i remember

00:03:01.720 always taking the train to manchester when i was going to university and there was a big

00:03:05.120 it looked like some kind of observation dome oh i'm sure there was that on the way but but but

00:03:10.460 by space telescope by definition it means it's in space oh is there an observatory near manchester

00:03:16.240 yeah i'm sure there are that might be right might be what i was thinking sorry but when we say space

00:03:20.400 telescopes we mean telescopes that are are in space i am a complete troglodyte on this subject so

00:03:25.220 please forgive my ignorance no worries yeah no of course of course if i can bring the wonder of space

00:03:29.960 telescopes to people out there then i'll be happy i've done my job um i did see once a tweet from

00:03:36.960 uh graham hancock saying people haven't really created anything genuinely new for centuries and

00:03:42.980 centuries and i was like uh space telescopes he didn't he didn't respond he'd probably be like oh

00:03:49.600 well that's just a telescope in space isn't it there's no difference it's just in space the first

00:03:55.660 time galileo ground a lens and realized he could magnify an image a bit there's no difference between

00:04:01.400 that and james webb there you go same thing anyway um so yeah james webb went up what a couple years ago

00:04:08.100 now and um it has been sending back images and science of all types and it really is the cutting

00:04:15.620 edge of our knowledge of our knowledge of the cosmos um is there anything better more wondrous

00:04:22.260 than that i don't know i don't think so um and it has done and will continue to show us

00:04:30.280 the edge of forever that's a kulsagan line that's not my line um and i wrote this article

00:04:39.280 what a couple couple years ago two and a half years ago now and it was right when it just went

00:04:45.140 up and was first starting to send its first images back is that the first image or one of the first

00:04:50.260 image but it's among the first yeah so what is that that we're seeing what's all of the uh where

00:04:54.680 does the yellow hazy coloring come from well so okay so well it's just a nebula uh but the coloring

00:05:03.720 is okay that's one of the more difficult things because they have to essentially sort of pick what

00:05:13.540 colors they're going to show what the real real color of it is is difficult to say because the

00:05:19.420 human eyeball can only deal with a certain small spectrum of colors right um so basically this is

00:05:26.180 what uh whenever you get an image on some level nasa have fiddled with it a bit to make it look

00:05:33.700 the way you eventually i expect there'll be all sorts of filters on it so sometimes

00:05:39.280 uh not just with james webb but for hubble anyway there'll be an image of a particular galaxy or

00:05:44.440 nebula or something and they'll there'll be multiple versions of it with sort of different

00:05:48.780 color grading on it um and you these space teleco space telescopes can see things in different

00:05:56.680 um frequencies of light so there's the visible spectrum then there's obviously the infrared and

00:06:02.980 ultraviolet as well um and james webb is an infrared telescope first and foremost so you can see the

00:06:11.540 longest most stretched out light that's why it can see back to almost the dawn of the universe

00:06:17.720 it's because with the expansion of the universe light itself has been stretched out by the expansion

00:06:23.220 of the cosmos light itself has been stretched out so the wavelengths are too long

00:06:27.320 for the human eye to see so you need an infrared sensor to to see it and then as i say nasa the

00:06:36.660 bods at nasa will translate into an image that we can then see on a computer screen but it's actually

00:06:42.140 wouldn't be visible to the human eye with the best will in the world that is pretty amazing yeah yeah

00:06:46.680 yeah no wonder you get so excited about this stuff it's like it it's it feels almost supernatural

00:06:52.920 to be able to see into something like that right yeah because as fast as light is it's not infinitely

00:06:58.940 fast so essentially you're looking back the further back further through space you're looking

00:07:04.540 it's the further back in time you're looking it's like it's the closest thing to a time machine

00:07:09.200 so when we see when infrared light hits the james webb space telescope sensors from 13 and a half

00:07:17.500 billion years ago you're looking back that light left where it originated from 13 and a half billion

00:07:25.420 years ago so you're looking back in time you're looking back to the dawn of time you're looking back

00:07:31.020 to the edge of forever if you like um so if i can quote myself like all good narcissists do um i said

00:07:40.980 since before the dawn of civilization men have gazed up at the twinkling lights in the night sky and

00:07:45.900 wondered at them we've always been enchanted and mystified by the stars they are beguiling and

00:07:50.860 beautiful unimaginably violent and yet the origin of all life they are disquiet disquieting disturbing

00:07:57.260 yet fascinating um yeah because i've gone later to say that um there is something you know obviously

00:08:05.320 i think wonderful mesmerizing almost about looking up at the stars knowing that the light is impossibly

00:08:11.480 ancient and the knowledge that when we look up at the night sky we're seeing light from who knows how

00:08:18.980 long ago of dying stars maybe maybe but when the ones that are visible to us to the to the naked eye

00:08:26.920 um are not that far away in the scheme of things all right maybe a few at most a few million years

00:08:33.000 light years away um only a few million yeah yeah okay so on the on the timescales of stars lifetimes

00:08:42.880 probably not but however still feels pretty long to me if you use a very powerful telescope or any sort

00:08:48.720 of space telescope then at a certain point yeah almost certainly all the stars you're seeing are

00:08:53.240 already dead not long ago um that's the nature of it it's crazy to think isn't it um but yeah this

00:09:01.040 idea that you it's disturbing when you think about it it's let's say wonderful and beautiful but also

00:09:07.280 disturbing when you actually think about it when you're standing outside looking up at the night sky

00:09:11.320 other than the tiny film of atmosphere that there is over the earth when you look at the earth

00:09:16.800 and how thick and deep the atmosphere is on the earth it's just a tiny film

00:09:21.880 beyond that there's just infinity above your head stretches out infinity

00:09:27.620 if you actually just dwell on that for a while you sort of well you realize how small and

00:09:37.420 insignificant we are really in the scheme of things on the cosmic scale so to me that doesn't feel

00:09:45.000 like small like small and insignificant it feels almost uh almost the opposite like we're special

00:09:50.300 yeah well so far we've seen no evidence of alien life some people you know some people you said you

00:09:58.020 said carl sagan uh wasn't it he who said that we are the universe looking back at itself

00:10:03.520 yeah we are that's that's a more uh uplifting way of looking we are star stuff every atom in our bodies

00:10:10.980 is made up of exploded stars our sun is a third maybe fourth generation star and all the matter

00:10:19.380 that went into creating our solar system and therefore us and everything is comes from supernova

00:10:25.980 or something along those lines so we are star stuff we are a way for the universe to know itself in fact

00:10:31.420 i've got a quote here from the late great carl sagan he said the cosmos is full beyond measure of

00:10:35.960 elegant truths of exquisite interrelationships of the awesome machinery of nature the surface of the

00:10:42.720 earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean on this shore we have learned most of what we know recently we've

00:10:47.860 waded a little way out maybe ankle deep and the water seems inviting some part of our being knows

00:10:53.400 that this is where we came from i.e. space we long to return and we can because the cosmos is within us

00:11:01.180 we are made of star stuff we are a way of the cosmos to know itself

00:11:04.940 yeah and that sounds a bit 1970s hippy dippy but it's also perfectly true isn't it uh the great

00:11:13.000 and if you if you're of a more religious mind you you could say that we're looking up at god's creation

00:11:17.860 oh well there's no need to go there i know i know that you wouldn't say anything like that

00:11:22.600 yeah there's there's no need to infer a crater in my opinion i i would say the opposite personally

00:11:30.240 there dinkum the uh richard fineman uh talked about the inconceivable nature of nature

00:11:37.340 um i mean fineman talked about how the when we look up at distant galaxies and star clusters and

00:11:46.060 things um they they seem as perfect as a snowflake as organic as a dandelion seed

00:11:52.540 um yeah and i and i think so um i say that we stand on the shoulders of giants the likes of

00:12:01.640 euclid and aristarchus or kepler and newton um and where we man just apparently can't stop

00:12:08.760 making tools we can't stop making finer and finer precision engineered tools we can't won't stop

00:12:18.020 um and this is the state this is the nature of a faustian man as spengler would have put it

00:12:25.000 isn't it we just we we are constantly curious yeah we need to learn more yeah even if sometimes it

00:12:33.720 leads us down bad paths although i wouldn't say that necessarily uh looking introvert looking into

00:12:38.880 and traversing space unless of course we do end up finding the event horizon and opening a portal to

00:12:43.880 hell and return into doom world that would genuinely be quite faustian but outside of that incredibly

00:12:50.060 slim possibility i i think it's um a wonderful and ambitious thing yeah i mean it's a double-edged sword

00:12:57.620 isn't it man's curiosity just take for example a atomic research where it makes atomic bombs but also

00:13:05.520 atomic energy you know the the research into flight because it's only a little over a century we've been

00:13:13.640 able to fly we've been able to copy the birds both we make ships of war for bombing and also

00:13:21.780 ultimately spaceships it's just amazing to consider that it was like you say just about a little over

00:13:28.180 100 years ago where we were having the first planes and now we're already doing this yeah yeah

00:13:34.320 spectacular like an exponential rise it's like a lot of things you see that in all sorts of ways

00:13:40.280 um that uh from like the evolution of life to uh research into sort of computer chips it's like a

00:13:47.460 very very very slow progression then there's some sort of tipping point and then the chart just goes

00:13:53.120 through the roof um hopefully mankind i hope mankind is is past that tipping point and it's just going

00:14:00.060 to go exponentially fast now um but okay i mean james webb just this year again this is supposed to be a

00:14:07.060 little bit of a look back at the last year's worth of sweet images that jwst has sent back to us

00:14:12.940 it's like a painting isn't it yeah and just on a purely aesthetic level it's beautiful yeah no absolutely

00:14:20.220 yeah um oh is this the the different uh oh it's a different hubble hubble on the left webb on the right

00:14:28.220 you can see the difference i mean hubble was purely optical light um and james webb can just see

00:14:37.840 not just with more clarity but with well it's just superior in sort of every sense

00:14:46.880 um so i thought we could just look through some of these again many of them are hubble and webb side

00:14:55.860 by side because if you can see in the infrared you can sort of see through

00:15:00.440 things to some extent see through dust clouds much more easily it makes a hell of a difference

00:15:07.380 um yeah things that sort of you sort of boggle the mind um

00:15:14.900 like that is is that real i mean i'm not really questioning if it's real of course it's real but

00:15:22.420 it's like you almost have to pinch yourself is that even a real thing you know it's amazing

00:15:28.480 amazing how throughout all of nature that kind of spiral that we see there the way it's twisting in

00:15:35.420 is is ubiquitous you find it everywhere even even in space yeah incredible it's it's all it's in here

00:15:43.420 and then it's out there as well it's amazing and if you drill down into the atomic subatomic world

00:15:49.100 it seems it's very similar and one thing that blows my mind is um some people say some actual

00:15:55.200 physicists say that um a black hole is in all sorts of ways like a single atom

00:16:01.080 its properties are like a single atom in all sorts of ways um it's only got mass and spin

00:16:08.500 and like not much else to it it's in terms of physics it's actually a really really simple

00:16:14.880 thing although monstrous um terrifying to conceive the way we see uh as you say those patterns

00:16:23.200 on different scales repeating themselves whether it's at the galactic or intergalactic scale

00:16:28.380 in our normal world or in the subatomic um the same nature repeats the same sorts of patterns

00:16:35.740 um and the way we see these things are just incidental it just happens that these things

00:16:41.760 are that particular plane from our point of view you know so the last one we saw is sort of um

00:16:47.840 head on to us and this one's obviously at a at an angle and it's just it's just by chance that

00:16:54.900 happens to be you know in millions of years time it will be at a different angle to us but

00:16:58.300 for right now um sorry i like the little description also known as the sombrero galaxy

00:17:06.620 yeah sombrero yeah this one you could just pop on your head look galaxies colliding with each other

00:17:12.220 in mid collision are quite remarkable because some people say we the milky way is going to collide

00:17:18.640 with andromeda i did watch a thing just the other day saying maybe those calculations aren't right and

00:17:23.240 we might miss each other this won't be for millions of years yet did watch something that they're saying

00:17:27.620 maybe they won't actually collide but i think still most people think they probably will

00:17:31.300 but it turns out that um most stars won't actually hit each other

00:17:35.880 um it's like if there was a swarm of bees and you shot a shotgun

00:17:41.520 most of the bees would be fine wouldn't get hit by the pellets you know um but still

00:17:48.380 what an image yeah two galaxies sort of splashing into each other whether the the supermassive black

00:17:56.040 holes at their core will eventually collide rotate around each other and eventually collide and form

00:18:02.320 an even more massive supermassive black hole um so look here's uh here's hubble's attempt

00:18:10.100 to view the sombrero and it's sort of washed out by light in all sorts of ways

00:18:14.600 um i actually think the hubble image in this instance is sort of more photogenic it's not really

00:18:21.320 the right word but certainly web can see more can see more detail there's no doubt about that

00:18:26.300 there's no doubt whatsoever on that score um so if anyone's even remotely interested i would advise

00:18:33.020 people to uh look this stuff up for themselves getting watch videos about james webb and what

00:18:40.800 it's doing um because it's going to be up there hopefully for quite a few more years

00:18:44.600 you know 10 maybe 20 years some it could get hit by a micro meteor and get damaged and be out of

00:18:51.460 action tomorrow or it could go on past its predicted lifespan which is a few years to 10 odd years

00:18:59.940 but some nasa missions go on long after that they expect it to burn out and die so some are saying that

00:19:07.760 maybe hopefully james webb might be sending back science and images for closer to 15 fingers crossed even

00:19:14.540 20 odd years and of course there are plans to build the next generation even bigger better one

00:19:21.140 um and just one last thing say it just it doesn't just send back images of like wonderful galaxy

00:19:28.600 structures um but it also has it was able it does look at like things in our solar system like really

00:19:37.520 good images of um jupiter or something i'm sorry some of these images this this one right here and

00:19:44.980 this this one right here in particular and some of these you mentioned 2001 a space odyssey

00:19:50.820 this is like straight out of the psychedelic sequence at the end of that right this is when uh

00:19:57.720 what dave i think the main character is traveling through who knows what to get to the monolith

00:20:04.620 that's that's amazing you're hurting me dave i can feel it oh yeah look at that that one actually

00:20:13.440 happens to be it says it's an artist's impression oh okay oh yeah artist's concept to be um not sort

00:20:20.040 of entirely real if you like oh but still um yes keeps keeps going down for a bit uh yeah you can see

00:20:26.500 some of those are sort of stretched out images it's stretched out well that's to do with um gravitational

00:20:33.280 lensing between us and that those stars or galaxies is something extremely massive like a black hole or

00:20:41.600 something and so the light has bent around oh yeah you can see how it's warping right it's more in the

00:20:47.160 larger image here yeah and of course it's warped but what it does mean is that we can see light from

00:20:52.080 even further away even further away than we would otherwise have been able to so that light is sort of

00:20:59.800 truly impossibly old billions and billions of years old those stars are probably all dead

00:21:05.260 now i'm stretching back to close to the dawn of the universe um i just think it's uh absolutely

00:21:15.500 remarkable i i i don't know how people aren't interested in that sort of thing i don't get it

00:21:21.620 but then i'm sort of quite an inquisitive person i'm interested in all sorts of history even sort of

00:21:27.780 crop rotation in the 13th century will interest me so it takes something extremely dull and boring

00:21:32.960 before i switch off out of boredom so something like this looking back to the the dawn of time

00:21:39.460 looking back to the edge of forever um of course i'm fascinated by it um just endlessly fascinated by

00:21:46.000 it um and i hope i do hope that um it's fired the imagination of at least one person out there

00:21:52.740 that goes away and uh looks it up for themselves and and is amazed yeah i'll have to look a bit more

00:22:00.500 into this because uh these pictures are awesome look at that see that looks like an eyeball

00:22:06.320 yeah there is an iris right in the middle yeah yeah there are a few stars and star clusters where

00:22:13.000 people they've given them names and they're things like the eye of sauron or whatever not that but

00:22:17.680 things like that that would be quite ominous it's just the eye of sauron that we're staring into

00:22:23.060 looking back at us yeah no big deal just just a real eye of sauron much much much bigger cosmically

00:22:29.060 bigger than tolkien could ever imagine probably more powerful merry christmas and a happy new year

00:22:35.940 and what you should be doing is using your new lotus eaters gift subscription that new feature we've

00:22:40.700 got on the site to watch all of our premium content where you've got lots of downtime over the holidays i

00:22:44.860 hope you're having a nice time also check out our twitter where we post links to everything that

00:22:49.280 we're putting out thank you very much for watching have a nice holiday and goodbye

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 01, 2025

Christmas Pre-Record ｜ Mankind’s Finest Instrument

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