Thursday, December 6, 2007

Old News

Astronomers have to stop calling images from space “new discoveries”. They’re not fooling anyone. This past week, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of spiral galaxy M81. It’s about 11.6 million light years from our solar system.


All that really means is that 11.6 million years ago, that’s what M81 looked like. Nobody knows what it looks like now. For all we know, it’s not even there anymore. Thanks for sucking, Hubble.

If I wanted to learn about shit 11.6 million years after it happened, I would just ask this lady to tell me about her childhood.

The way I see it, looking into deep space is like watching ESPN Classic. The game is only exciting for the few seconds prior to the realization that it ended like 20 years ago. Hubble is the ESPN classic of telescopes; it’s the most expensive VCR ever made. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of watching re-runs of the universe. The trouble is, we’re stuck here forever, and some jackass lost the remote.

1 comment:

Kristen said...

It's under the left couch cushion, but the batteries are dead!