Sometimes humanity needs a little encouragement to pull itself out of its disagreements and to see how disastrous and pointless they are against the backdrop of the astonishing fact of our existence. The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are such a moment. They are an opportunity for us to take a step back and see ourselves, and our wars, in the bigger picture of the universe.
On July 11, images were revealed to a restless world of the cosmos in which our human trials and history play out. The first picture we saw from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was a deep field view of the universe in which hundreds of little dots were scattered across an area a mere pinprick in the sky, each dot a galaxy containing billions of stars. Some of those galaxies in the photograph came into existence just after the formation of the universe itself, older than a staggering 13 billion years.
The dye-hard pragmatists might see this flurry of astronomy as nothing more than a brief diversion from the war in Ukraine; they might even see it as strangely irrelevant to the matter of life and death on the eastern front. Yet the timing of these images is propitious because they are an opportunity not merely to reflect on the brazen destructiveness of this war, but to remind ourselves of the stupidity of propelling our civilization into such horrors, and even to the edge of the nuclear precipice.
It is easy at the scale of a human being to see our lives as purposeful and significant. We observe the world out of those two small spheres embedded in our heads. Around us we experience the direct consequences of our everyday actions.
When we do stand back and see a more capacious view through a telescope, we can begin to comprehend that in the larger universe, our affairs are diminutive. Two thousand years ago, Roman writer Cicero speculated on what the world might look like from afar. His “Dream of Scipio” recounts the traveler’s surprise at seeing Earth so small.
Cicero’s vision was incredible for a society that had never gone into space, and we do not know whether he believed that technology would ever make it possible for his fiction to become reality. However, in the 21st century, we have not only sent humans into space, but we can now peer billions of years back in time. We collect the light that has traversed for all those eons across the great emptiness of space and lands on the lenses of our ingenious contraption.
In that spectacular image from the space telescope, we could wonder whether any of those galaxies have been the homes of other civilizations, peering into the darkness with their own astronomical machines. The simple answer is that we do not know. But we do know one thing. We know that we don’t see any obvious signs of other intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, let alone elsewhere. There are some people who claim to have seen UFOs, but so far, we don’t have any robust evidence for a chattering menagerie of creatures out there.
That’s a strange thing, given that immensity. Physicist Enrico Fermi once pondered on this unsettling silence. If there are stars many millions of years older than us, surely there are aliens out there also of greater age? If you recall that we have advanced from horse-and-cart to spaceships in not much more than a century, then surely a civilization many millions of years older than us would have acquired the wherewithal to visit us? Where are they?
Since Fermi’s tantalizing question, there have been a never-ending series of possible solutions that go from the bizarre – that they are here and watching us like the visitors of a zoo might peer at the giraffes in a pen, to the worrying – that they are bad tempered, and the silence is a result of their destructive tendencies; one species on the rampage is destroying everyone else.
There is a simpler explanation. Aliens may be non-existent, rare, or so far away that the distances they must cross to reach us are beyond even the best technologies.
By now, you might think that I have strayed far from the war in Ukraine. But I have not.
Enormity of our insignificance
As our horizons have expanded and our understanding of our place in the universe has blossomed, so we have come to appreciate the awesome vastness of the universe around us. We have begun to see more clearly our place on a tiny speck of rock in orbit around one star, just one of 200 billion stars in a galaxy that itself is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the cosmos.
This enormity is both sobering and belittling, but unfortunately it has not been made more homely by discovering that this multitude of worlds hosts a bustling community of intelligent minds with whom we might share our intimidation with the universe. It has turned out to be disturbingly lonely.
And there is more. As we stare into those images from the telescope, we see no signpost that tells us what our purpose is. There are no cosmic billboards hanging from distant galaxies that inform us what our existence is all about, even less so anything suggesting we are special. All we see is the purposeless spinning of galaxies and the birth and death of stars. As far as we are aware, the universe couldn’t care less about our future. Indeed, 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs, who had reigned over Earth many tens of millions of years longer than our tenure, were wiped out in an instant. We are sure that an asteroid slammed into Earth and brought their glory to an end in a single day.
The images from the telescope have reminded us that for the time being we have just ourselves. This might make you feel insignificant, but equally you might see great meaning in this. We are likely to be an unusual outpost of sentience in a senseless universe. Perhaps we should take care of ourselves a little better.
Lessons from the universe
You might ask: Am I suggesting that some images from a space telescope should motivate us to end war?
Let me propose something that I don’t think is radical: yes, I am suggesting exactly that. I am saying that intelligent beings should grasp the fragility and beauty of our presence in this infinite universe. Those who can see this reality should do all they can to preserve this flicker of consciousness. For what ultimate purpose? We do not know. But while we are here, we should try to live well and to bring joy, decency, and peace to our fellow creatures who inhabit this strange little planet.
I am saying that anyone who looks at an image of the universe captured from light that set off from distant stars about nine billion years before our own world was even a concept – before even the first single-celled creature came into existence on this planet – can probably see the utter futility of this war. Such a person should apprehend the pointless misery for a creature that must already contend with the possibility of a long isolation in the cold cosmic barrenness. Is this really how we want to spend our existence here, fighting for historical mirages and aberrations?
I’m not saying that our astronomical knowledge, a grasp of our place in the universe, will automatically change our behavior toward one another. Human beings can be intransigent things. But I do believe that if we had any rationality about us, we would actively use this knowledge to better ourselves. I believe it is possible to stare into an image from a telescope and fathom the awfulness of going on a rampage across the surface of this small globe, killing and plundering. For what and why?
Cicero had an answer. After Scipio had seen the Earth from a distance, Africanus, the narrator says: “You can surely see how small is the area over which your glory is so eager to extend. And even those who talk about us now—how long will they continue to do so?”
How long indeed? There is no glory or significance to be had in crushing the peace and freedom of others on this fleck of a cosmic island. The James Webb Space Telescope provides timely evidence of this fact. So, perhaps fellow humans, we should look at the images, reflect on our tenuousness, and stop it.
Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
