First, another weird dream. I dreamt that I received an email with an attached video. I must have known the sender or I wouldn’t have opened the attachment. The video was really just a still, a dimly lit picture with a graphic that read, “We’re sorry, but we will not be able to complete the work on your car.”

Obviously, I am thinking far more than I realize consciously about the fact that the shop that currently has my Z06 has now had it for about three weeks. I have not received any updates for about a week. I know the saying–“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”–but I don’t think I can speed up the repair process with constant communication.

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Yesterday, NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA is conducting this mission in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Let me throw in my opinion that I think this is a much better use of government money than to give it to lazy pieces of shit who want to stay home, smoke weed and play video games.

According to the NASA website, the primary purpose of the Webb Telescope is “to unfold the infrared universe.” I think all of the released photos are amazing, but I’ll only share two of them.

 

 

From NASA: “This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.”

 

 

From NASA: “Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.”

 

Another revelation from NASA is this, “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze [emphasis mine], in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.

The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away.

While the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres over the past two decades, capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks a giant leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.”

 

It is a virtual certainty that we are not the only so-called intelligent life in the universe. It is also a virtual certainty that I will no longer be alive when the existence of such life elsewhere is revealed.

NASA’s budget is about $25 billion a year, a tiny fraction of the nearly $5 trillion spent by the federal government. NASA’s research and operations have stimulated high economic output relative to its expenditures. Its R&D on space exploration has produced technological innovations; thank NASA for GPS, weather satellites and dialysis machines.

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Just because I am a car aficionado does not mean I have to be interested in anything with a motor and wheels. Unlike far too many people, I do not think that my life is everyone else’s life, that my reality is everyone else’s reality or vice versa.

The fact that the Threes And Sevens series will end with 1997 is a reflection of my view. I didn’t know this when I originally picked that year to end the series, but that was the first year that cars constituted less than half of the new vehicles sold in the US.

I don’t HAVE to be interested in SUVs, pickup trucks, motorcycles, EVs or anything else. If you have interest in any or all of the preceding vehicles, more power to you. Pursue your interests, but DON’T tell me I have to share those interests. My life is not your life, my reality is not your reality. The car pictured below is a great representation of my interest.

 

 

By the way, I will not show this gorgeous 1961 Ferrari 250GT Pininfarina Coupe in the Hall of Very Good Cars series because no doubt exists that it would be included in the next version of my Ultimate Garage.

 

#WebbTelescopeWednesday

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