Great question! The reason there's missing patches is because this wasn't one continuous shot like a panorama. This is a series of individual photos that have been stitched together at their overlap points. This provides more detail than a panoramic shot would.
JWST has a certain amount of operational hours per year and research groups have to apply to use the telescope. The team that took these images was likely trying to find old galaxies, not make a great panorama. So they focused on parts of the sky that were important to their research
I used to mess around with some photo stitching software to make 360 images back in college. That was just maybe a dozen pictures from a gopro. The idea of how much data and processing went into making this is just nutty by comparison.
We have to be at some level of self righteousness to think we are alone. It's way to vast and full to think otherwise. Everywhere you look there are literally billions of galaxies and within those are billions of stars with a good chance that each star has a planetary system.
Never to find any
Good. Gosh. Again, I can't imagine how many civilizations there could be in those galaxies. There definitely has to be extraterrestrial life in those regions of space. The probability of us being alone is simply not feasible given how old and large our universe is. No. Way.
I think it's almost certain that the conditions for life to arise exist in much of the universe. It just comes down to whatever it is that kicks things off and "starts" life. Since we don't know for certain what that was, it's difficult to say how likely it is to occur.
I mean, our planet alone proves life and intelligent life can exist in this universe. There's just no way Earth is the only instance of this. The odds of that are just unbelievably low given once again how old and gigantic our universe is, with its colossal number of galaxies. You know what I mean?
Seriously, that's probably the tiniest sliver of galaxies. Humans tend to put themselves in the center of the universe, but in fact, we aren't even a grain of sand on the beach.
And this is why we need to find a way to get past our pettiness, stupidity, anger and greed. If we manage to take ourselves out, the universe won't care. God(s) won't save us. We're not special.
An interesting macro image that reminds me of a confocal microscopic image of the immunofluorescence staining of a tissue sample using CFP, YFP and RFP-labeled antibodies. Just a small decrease in scale 😄
Comments
Never to find any
Would they still be referred to as people..?
Huh, I think it's that one. 🤔
We only matter to us.
Oddly, I find this comforting.