Never Stop Learning

The Subject line is a common phrase I use in conversations with students in addition to my internal thoughts. The internet is full of garbage and bad news/information but it is also rich with opportunities to learn about so many subjects. Find something to challenge yourself and the results will be obvious.

It only takes a few brilliant people in this world to keep rest of us gainfully employed and/or entertained.

This is another phrase I use often. I am not a smart man. I am an ant leveraging off the knowledge of others. I am not particularly creative but I'm a decent imitator of others. I try to be a sponge absorbing knowledge and and then try to understand and apply it.

The JWST photos released yesterday are amazing. From a speck of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length, we see incredible detail and light that has travelled as far as billions of years to reach us. The scale is beyond comprehension for most of mankind but there are layers after layers of brilliant men and women that have contributed in our attempt to understand what we are observing. I have been fascinated with the history of what we think we know and have accepted as fact today. How many false ideas were accepted as fact centuries ago and how did we escape past those beliefs? How many current beliefs will be proven wrong in the future?

I have been a fan of documentaries like NOVA but politics have crept further and further into their shows such that I don't watch them much anymore. I ran across a documentary on Amazon Prime that I recommend highly to everyone - regardless your level of science knowledge. The title is "Everything and Nothing". It is a two hour history and science lesson presented in comfortable terms - both in technical detail and minimum political slant. Watch it and tell me what you think. I could be totally wrong thinking it will appeal to a broad audience.

Oh yea..... I need a photo today. I decided to post my favorite JWST photo from yesterday with a link to all of the information released yesterday.

This is a spot of cosmic dust (nebula) similar to what your eyes can see in our own Milky Way. If you have never seen a dark sky, you need to put that on your bucket list and make it happen. This region was thought to be just that - cosmic dust hanging around as a star dies and explodes (super nova). This formation is 2500 light years away making this light being emitted during the Roman Empire. This image is so detailed, it is like looking into someone's eye where we see what is behind the cosmic dust. This photo is top-down view of the dust cloud that is shaped like a bowl. If observed from the side, you would see two bowls stacked base-to-base as the waves of exploded debris are ejected from the two stars (one center and one to the left)

Read about the image here:

Using another instrument (MIRI) to study this same formation, the image and information shifts again.

This photo used the sensor that is operating at near absolute zero temperatures in order to see different wavelengths of light. For the first time, we see a second star in the center of this nebula. It is a red dwarf previously hidden by the adjacent bright star.

Read more about this image at



Have a great day and go learn something new!

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