Boldly going further than we’ve gone before

Even for lay people, the recent months have sparked interest and excitement in astrophysics. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has resulted in some astonishing images from our universe that have never been seen before. The themes planned to be explored by the JWST were introduced in a research paper by Gardner, Mather, Clampin, and Doyon in 2009. It is always intriguing to connect the dots between the creativity of scientists and the vision realized in 2021.

Another reason to track the history of a project like this is to feel informed when curveballs are thrown into the mix. In 2022, a significant uproar was released when an image of a new planet was released. There was excitement at the bright red disk representing an unknown world never seen before. It was later found that the image was a disk of pepperoni photographed and presented as an image from the JWST.

While this is an amusing prank and took social media by storm, it also showed the trust we place in scientists to present data to us authentically. When there is a prank such as this, there is potential to erode our belief in the authentic sources of scientific discovery.

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