Citation Needed - The Hubble Space Telescope

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

he Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope but it is one of the largest and most versatile, well known both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. ---- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Right, but with the expansion, every one of the diamonds you surround gives you another pick from the center pile. You get an extra pick. It's just sounds super confusing and lame. I don't think I'm gonna lie. It's not confusing and lame, it's a fun game that's fun. Really? Yes.

Well, if it isn't Eli and Heath, just as we expected. Hey, you know, hey, Hey Cecil, you, um, your voice sounds weird and what, what, what are you doing there? You doing a little science fair. It's a wider eyes so wide. Yes. Oh, great question. Also, don't pretend like you don't know. Yeah. Yeah. What he said, no, no, what? This week's episode, it's about the Hubble Space Telescope, which is awesome, by the way, awesome. Thank you, thank you. So, Nolan, I got here early to preempt whatever you guys were planning.

We weren't like planning anything. We're just sure you weren't. Well, too bad, we beat you to it. Oh, what's this? An exhibit on eugenics? Just another thing that science got wrong, am I right? Am I right? Or maybe you preferred this

Velcro Because it's all we've ever gotten not a NASA's Velcro isn't it you fucking lot it's guys guys you got it all wrong Keith and I love science you You do Yeah without science we wouldn't have VR porn just top of my head. Yep VR porn so so you're not gonna make fun and Noah's cool essay I mean what have they ever shot any porn on the Hubble telescope? No, okay? Well then yeah, we're gonna make fun of it a lot right anyway. See you guys in a bit. Oh god Statistically speaking there's gotta be some kinky shit going on in the ultra deep field image

Yes, what he said about it Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Tom and I'll be peering more intently at Uranus than anyone's uncomfortable with, but I'm going to need some friends to poke around the rings with me So I'm joined tonight by two men who aren't allowed by law-doned telescopes binoculars or drones Heath and no, yeah, you know it turns out you waste enough emergency room time getting those things Revealed they put it on

Also, SpaceX is better than NASA. What? I said it. Had to be said. Talk to my expert on the inside. She said it's not even close. SpaceX wins. Tell us a name. And the one who's been to the moon, allegedly, Stanley Kubrick. And also joining us tonight, one man who needs, as much magnification as he can get,

and one whose gas clouds are famous the world over Cecil and Ela. When it names 10x, it's not what you think, ladies. Not what you think. Okay, fine, it's true. Technically, one of my fart started coronavirus, but he's the one who made Bat-Soup with it. He is the one. All right, guys, some people who listen to our show, well they're patrons and some are not.

I'm not saying that if you're not a patron that you're stealing because that's not technically true, but it's also very nearly true. So our patrons guys, these are the reasons that Eli's baby won't starve to death. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're not a patron, you hate Eli's baby, too.

So I think that's awesome. I think about what kind of person that makes you. And while you're doing that, stick around for the end of the show. If you'd like to join the ranks of those people who don't have babies, we will tell you how to join. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event?

Well, we'll be talking about that. I think you set up a dangerous Sophie's choice thing, but go ahead, sorry. Well, get excited, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about my fourth favorite telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope. Nerd. All right. And Noah, you've been floating the stoppick for a while. Are you ready to keep us entertained and enthralled by what I'm going to guess will

be the history of polished glass magnification. I am always willing to keep you enthralled by polishing Tom. All right, Noah, what is the Hubble telescope? All right, so the Hubble Space Telescope, also known as the HST, the Hubble or Hubs, is the world's most famous telescope. Probably. Hubs is so friendly's most famous telescope. Probably. Hubs is so friendly. I'd like to know. Yeah, we're on a first syllable basis. Swipe up to join the citation needed only fans

and we'll rate your telescope. Stop turning the economy fans happen. It's not gonna happen. Relax with that. Never. Never. Never. All right.

So the Hubble is a space telescope that was launched into low earth orbit back in 1990 and has become such good publicity for astronomy That we have since forgiven them for discovering enormous vortices of darkness They can rip apart stars and swallow whole galaxies and failing to think of a cooler name for them than black hole Fun fact about black holes. They're so boring. They can stretch a conversation out to nearly infinity They're so boring, they can stretch a conversation out to nearly infinity. Oh, okay. Oh, okay.

All right. I suppose if you tried hard enough, you can drag this story out so far that it starts in the 1600s. Can't you know? I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked. Telescope was first invented in 1608. And while we have developed a bunch of different kinds of telescopes since then, the basic

design of the optical telescope and therefore the basic design of the Hubble, hasn't changed all that much. The earliest telescopes used curved lenses to focus light, and today's high-end telescopes use curved mirrors instead, but the concept is basically the same. You're basically just using a really big piece of glass to see a really small point of light. I swear to God, if the atrascents were the first one

to do this, I'm fucking leaving them out of here. They watched the stars a lot. They did. They did have telescopes, though. No, now, I was, I tried, I'm always trying to figure out some way to tie it in, but no. Now within a year of the first patent application on a telescope, Galileo was using one to look at the stars and planets and shit, and it turned out that stuff was way cooler than anybody thought back then or then he's Eli and Tom think now.

Interesting. Nope, not yet. It doesn't have that much space isn't real. Whatever. Race to build a better telescope began and it's been ongoing now for about 400 years. Of course, through most of that history, better meant bigger. So early on, better just meant, you know, lens isn't lumpy, but once they figured out the basics of glass grinding techniques, it was just a matter of how big a mirror you could reasonably

build without breaking. Yeah, we do the same thing with businesses in the national economy these days. And you know, after exhausted research, we found that we haven't actually found an upper limit for it. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy enough. Just everyone's shitty uncle arguing that it's not unreasonable for one guy to have a billion foot wide mirror. I'm a need a mirror that big one day.

All right. So this leads to the obvious question of why the fuck anybody would want to put a telescope in space, right? Like, I mean, it's not like, that's a super convenient place to have it in terms of fiddling with the focus. And for it to be possible to launch, it has to be pretty modest in size compared to cutting edge telescopes.

Like, the largest optical telescopes have lenses that are almost as wide as the Hubble is long. And the largest single aperture telescope ever, that big fucker in Puerto Rico is a thousand feet across. Okay, I'm sure that's doing good stuff. Just feels like Puerto Rico should focus on like earthy stuff at this particular time. At their defense, they thought we had their back. So one reason you want to telescope in space is because Earth spins. Allegedly.

You're not. No, it just does. So when you're taking a picture with a ground-based telescope, it's kind of like taking a picture out of the window of your car while you're driving a lot. Like when you're photographing shit that's a gazillion miles away, the ability to maintain an exposure longer

than a third of the Earth's rotation is kind of critical. When I expose myself a third of the time, it's court hearing this and school zone that. And it's all about what's third of your self-hearing exposure. But so that's only part of it though. The other big thing is atmospheric. Like yes, we're talking about clouds.

They suck when you're trying to look at the stars. But even if you build your telescope in a place with very little cloud cover as astronomers tend to do, you still have to deal with the distortions from the atmosphere itself. All the nitrogen and oxygen between your lens and the star jostles the light around a bit before we get it. That's why stars appear to twinkle when observed from the Earth. And sure, we can use computers to correct that a lot of that distortion, but the best

option is just to not have atmosphere between you and the thing you want to look at. Yeah, and business has been working on that too, Paschiaat atmosphere. Get out of here. Okay. Well, I for one think astronomers should stop correcting distortion. It hurts red dwarf celestial body image. I should note though that the idea of putting telescopes in space dates back nearly a hundred years at this point.

There was a book in 1923 that mentioned it, but the history of the Hubble itself really starts in 1946 with the publication of Lyman Spitzer's paper Astronomical Advances of an Extra-Terrestrial Observatory, where he lays out the advantages that we just discussed. Plus some other sciencey stuff I left out for Eli's sake about how space telescopes could observe infrared and ultraviolet light that our atmosphere absorbs almost entirely. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, the different colors from a bajillion light years away, that's super useful.

We all know that. That's amazing. But we need to start selling NASA better. Like talk about spying on space muslims or something. Like space force. Just PR. You know, get it going. Okay. So kind of unrelated, but Lyman Spitzer, I should note, he was a member of Scullin

Bones. Interesting. Hansi Skield Kennedy. Crisis actor. Neutown was a hoax. Whoa. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was the first person to climb Mount Thor. There's a Mount Thor? Yes, largest vertical drop in the world. And also he dedicated his career to the construction of space telescopes. So like, if legacy is entirely determined by how much cool sounding shit is in your one sentence bio, I'm pretty sure Lyman Spitzer won the

history. Alignment Spencer is rum citrus club soda with a splatge of simple syrup stirred with your dick. That's what it is. And to actually order that trick, life's you do is belly up to the bar and just say, me too. Yeah. So in 1962, a report by the National Academy of Sciences recommended the US government developed a space telescope and Tucker Carlson wasn't there to scream socialism back then

so they said yes. In 1965, Spitzer was appointed the head of the committee tasked with defining the scientific objectives of that telescope. Yeah, to be fair, this is because it was 1962 and someone just told the guys with checkbooks that they'd be able to use the telescope to see Russia from their house. That's true, yeah, actually. Now, at that point, space based astronomy wasn't entirely unheard of. Basically, as soon as we had rockets, we had nerds, strappings, scientific instruments to them.

So as far back as 1946, we were using rocketry to measure the ultraviolet spectrum of the sun and stuff like that. In 1962, both the US and the UK launched solar observatories, but it wasn't until 1968 that NASA started really shorted up plans for a space-based reflecting telescope. Now the original plans then called for a telescope with a mirror of three meters in diameter, Jaxaya 10 feet, which they hoped to launch in 1979. And with typical astrophysics flare for nomenclature, they called it the large space telescope or LST. Come on.

Again, better branding, guys. That's the intergalactic inverted photon rifle. There you go. There you go. That's exciting. Obviously. I mean, I think we can all agree that they should have sent a poet. It's so, really designed.

This guy to sit in low earth orbit, which meant that it could be worked on. You could theoretically like launch a crew up to do maintenance on it and shit. And while that was billed as a way of extending, it's like, it was really more about offering up another justification for those sweet ass space shuttles they wanted to build. Yeah, there's no reason or replace the garage door opener for just keeping the same car. It's stupid, right? Yeah, exactly, right. Right.

That's actually, that's NASA and a nutshell right there. So NASA gets all excited and they create two committees, one to plan the actual engineering of their space telescope and another to decide the scientific goals of the mission. And the whole time, okay, well, which should they establish one and then the other? These two seem like, these are rocket scientists. Tom, thank you very much. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, so the whole time Congress is sitting back on, what the fuck would you put

a telescope in space? Who would want to, like, who would be there to look in the little eye piece? Right? So by 1974, when NASA stubbornly refused to take half of a space telescope and compromise, Congress posed the funds altogether. Congress did a thing, talk about science fiction, am I right? But to be fair, what Congress did was to refuse to do the thing. Yeah, actually, that's actually, that's the only gold star on Congress's rebel party. So for the last 70 years, you can make a medium space telescope, medium. There you go. So astronomers lost their shit over the loss of funding.

And I know you're probably imagining astronomers losing their shit and thinking, yeah, I'm not sure I'm super threatened now. But we're talking about people who heard about like repeatedly observing the same points of light and measuring minute changes in their relative position over years and devoted their lives to it, right? Like it'd be hard for us to find a more persistent group of humans. So after all, a ton of very awkward, Ida Shoe meetings between senators and senators, Congress eventually created 1978 to approve $36 million for their project

with the aim of launching it in 1983. Oh, Jesus Christ, fine, I'll give you the money. Okay, please seriously take a step back. You've been awkwardly breathing in my personal space for four years. Yeah. Of course, they did not hit that 1983 scheduled launch date, but one very important thing

in the telescope's history did happen in that year in honor of Lyman Spitzer, who'd spent almost four decades of his life dedicated to the construction of a space telescope. They renamed it after Edwin Hubble. And look, I mean, I get Spitzer was alive, and it would have been weird today after I had a live guy,

and I get that they did name a space telescope after Spitzer pretty much like the minute that he died. And I get that Edwin Hubble is fine, but it sucks for Lyman that the one space telescope that people less nerdy than me have heard of is named after some other mother of father. Which is exactly why we should start the Eli Bosnik scholarship for people who shot themselves to death.

Now, thank you. Thanks for going, thank you. Keith, thanks. Get it going. Thank you. So anyway, along the way, while they're putting the sucker together, they pushed the launch date back to October of 1986, which is looking super reasonable. Everything's coming along great to hit that launch date

until January of that year, when, as you'll recall, seven people blew the fuck up on their way to space. Because time is fine with space topics when people explode in them. Yeah. Okay, but to be clear, it's because of what the human drama of their blown out O-rings represented to me. It's the metaphor, yeah.

So, okay. So, needless to say, that slowed down NASA's launch scheduled by quite a bit. Yeah, I feel like that made for some awkward check-ins, right? Hey, Dave, right? Congressman Northam, what can I do for you? Yeah, just wanted to check in, see how the space telescope project is going.

Well, it's going fine, sir. Great. Um, uh, dot all your eyes. Also your T's. Yes, yes, sir. Yes, sir is said in my report. We have no reason to expect any complications at all with the Hubble project, sir. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what you said last time. But then right after you said that, you blew up kindergarten teacher on national television, didn't you? That's our bad. So, yeah, well, it is your bad.

And that's what I'm saying all this. Just double check everything really, especially the external fuel tanks, just to be sure. Well, sir, the Hubble doesn't have any external fuel tanks. So we're good. We're good. Oh, good, good then.

That's probably for the best, because, well, you know, last time you had those, you, uh, a blue, but kindergarten teacher on a national TV. We know, sir, you can't, you'll never let us forget. Great. Great. Fantastic. You could just drop it.

Sometimes. So, that's really what happened to you. It's on time. That's so mean. That's really what happened to you. So after the challenge or exposure, the US Space Program came to a grinding halt and the Hubble Space Telescope, which was essentially built and ready to go at that point, had to be put in cold storage, which isn't just a matter of toss and a tarp over it. Okay, this is a precision instrument going to fucking space. So it has to be kept in a clean

room with no dust. It has to be powered up and purged with nitrogen the whole time. That cost about six million dollars a month and they did it for four fucking years. Oh shit. You could have made 48 Lee majors for that. God. That's amazing. It's really not of you. That's like a whole space horse. It's a whole space horse. This whole part of the operation was run by America's white suburban dad coalition. Like they honed their skills obsessively winterizing their lawn equipment for generation. Actually, yes.

Yeah. Six hundred. All right. So the original estimated price tag of this thing was about 400 million bucks. By the time they launched it in 1990, the costs were more like $4.7 billion. No, damn. But in April of 1990, the finished product, seven years late, and an order of magnitude over budget was loaded aboard the space shuttle discovery and sent into low Earth orbit. With the nation still stinging from the challenger disaster, the amazing discoveries it was poised to make were exactly the

kind of PR boost NASA needed. Just as long as it wasn't a broadcast piece of shit in ways they didn't discover until it was floating 353 miles upon the earth's surface Okay, all right. I admit I'm not an expert on telescopes and science numbers, but that's last line sounded For sure Yeah, I'm gonna guess Noah here wants to pause so let's take a break for a little apropos of nothing All right, I want to get through this budget meeting before three. I got a tea time. Let's go Of course, sir, pretty straightforward So let's see here. We need 700 billion for the ongoing wars and such.

Obviously, right? Okay, give that a stamp. Good. Fine, fine. We have the new invisible submarine we're working on. That's gonna cost 20 billion. Sure thing. Does it work though?

No. Doesn't matter, approved. Is that it? What else you got? A couple more items. Okay, super soldier serum. That's gonna be 10 billion you got? A couple more items. Super soldier serum. That's going to be 10 million and 40 billion for drones. 40 billion for drones. Okay, sounds reasonable. And what about that jet that turns into a robot from that movie? Yeah, the Transformers initiative.

Let's say 130 billion worth every penny. Love it. Sir, I did have one request. I don't know if you will. We'll look at nerd in. Oh, I work here. I'm the head of NASA. What? I've never heard of that. I think you just walked past the car. I think he's just making one

five billion for new security. Oh, yeah. You know what? Sounds good. Anyway, what do you want? Nerd spit it out. Let's go. I just, I thought maybe we could, I don't know, fund some space stuff. I don't know. Space stuff?

What the hell for? Planets moving someplace, you don't suspect? Well, well, astronomy funding has brought us innovations in charging technology, new computer languages, GPS, magnetic imaging, clean rooms. We wanted to do an all-body- We should feed the poor first. Yeah, have you heard of them?

They're called the poor, the poor. I mean, I mean, you have to choose between knowing true things about the universe and helping people. One actually actively contributes to the other one. So it's not blah, blah, blah, blah. Look, I get it. You want to fuck a moon rock or whatever. But unless you can come up with some practical reasons

for this funding We're not gonna be able to help you or Bassa Satellites gonna be able to see Russia if we get it. You're gonna have $850 billion for that one. Cool Nerd Well, that went precisely the way that I thought it would. Okay, no, when we left you, everything was gonna be okay, unless it was it. So, I guess where does that leave us now? Okay, so yeah, here's NASA. Again, we're four years off this terrible disaster that happened while all the kids in the nation were watching

that had really come to define the space program to a lot of people. So like in the year before the challenger blew up, there had been nine shuttle launches. In the four years plus between that and the launch of the Hubble, there had also been nine shuttle launches. Right. We hadn't exactly regained our confidence in NASA. And leading up to the launch, there were constantly playing the Hubble the fuck up. So it not working was basically the worst thing that could have happened, short of it falling out of space and landing on six astronauts in a kindergarten. Little did we know that if we wanted Americans not to care about it, we should have told them the challenger exploded in a mass shooting.

Yeah, right? Yeah, there you go. But despite all their high hopes for basic competency within a couple of weeks of the launch, it was clear that there were serious problems with the optical system. Now, the Wikipedia article gives the description of the problem with the images that were being returned. Quote, images of point sources spread out over radius of more than one arc second, instead of having a point spread function,

PSD concentrated within a circle 0.1 arc seconds, 458 N-RED in diameter, as had been specified in the design criteria. And, quote, 80-its stupid. Yeah, right, no. Stupid. Yeah, right. No, that's the, we just spent five and a half billion dollars on a telescope that doesn't work version of the picture looks

all fucked up. Right? All the American people are wondering if you can translate that into do-wadgers and thing-am-a-bobs form. We really have. Yeah, so basically, if you try to take a picture of God, he changes math and fucks up your thing there. America got it.

America got it. That's what happened. If that same fucking problem happened now, we would just sit there for three hours trying to fix it with different filters. Like, okay. So I think I got it now, guys. Saturn appears to have, what you did in that. Nine rings and doggy ears. Okay, perfect. Science is fun. Space force. appears to have nine rings and doggy ears.

Okay. Science is fun. Space force. Yeah, right. We're getting closer and closer. Okay, so now's to put their best people on this, which seems like a step you take before you launched it, but you know, hindsight and all that, I guess. And they determine that the mirror is the wrong shape, which is odd because reflecting telescope is just, you know, mirror shape. That's like

pretty much that's the whole thing. It's a properly shaped mirror. Uh, and it's not like you can just fly your space shuttle back up there and buff out the wrinkles. The main telescope part of the telescope was fundamentally fucked up. Look, my dick can't get any hotter than room temperature butter, but my balls are fine. They're fine. Yeah. That was finally appropriate for you to announce that. I have a t-shirt with that. I've announced that a long time ago. Thank you very much. Or is it at this point, the Hubble telescope is a fucking punchline right the entire country is pointing at NASA and going you Asales with your primary telescope 20 200 nanometers to flat around the rim and your resultant spherical aberrations

I to made such a better space telescope But to be fair the telescope isn't just the mirror right it had a bunch of other shit on it That still function just fine and because the problem was consistent to some degree, astronomers could subtract it out. It wasn't perfect, but it was still doing good science. All that being said, $4.7 billion is more than you want to spend for kind of still works though. We're going to pay $22 billion for a border wall. I mean, we're fine with ineffectiveness if it's racist enough. They should just, they should just never use it to keep an eye on MS13. Boom, funded, no problem. Yeah, I worked that hard.

Just slap a Confederate flag on that bad boy. They'll give you the money to make free. We call it the general Lee. Yeah. They're jumping rockets over. So the article on Wikipedia goes into detail here about exactly how the error got introduced. And I'm not gonna pretend that I understand any of that.

But the key is that the error came from an error in measurement, but it was a damn precise error. Yeah, measure twice, cut funding for NASA once. It takes to be ever-dose. Right, right. Unfortunately, they didn't have your dad there to help him out, but it was still built by these very exacting specifications. It was just built to the wrong exacting specifications.

But that's why the problem was ultimately fixable, right? So they couldn't replace the mirror once the thing was in space, and it would have been dangerous and stupid, expensive to try to bring it back to Earth and then lunch it again. But what they could do was build a lens that had the same problem as the mirror, but in reverse. So that's what they did. The best way to fix the mirror was to unbreak a different mirror opposite wise.

Are we sure NASA wasn't hiring a stone to nephew? We are, just not at all sure of that. No, of course, it's not like you can just order, like, an off the shelf, Hubble lens, and it's not like you can just swing by the space telescope next time you're in space. So pretty much right away, they know that they're not going to get a chance to fix this fucker until 1993. So for three years, it's just this standing joke about NASA's incompetence, well, they bust ass trying to fix it.

I don't have the other space programs. They are just knocking their books out of their hands. Kind of. We're yeah. So in December of 93, the space shuttle in Denver takes seven astronauts to the telescope along with the corrective optic space telescope axial replacement or co-star. There's so much better at acronyms and names. And over a 10 day period, they install this fix and tweak a half dozen other problems with a satellite and Declare the mission of complete success the original NASA scientists is just hanging out watching the new team fix it

Yeah, I would have done this myself, but you know crazy busy week at a wrench you work with there Socket What a gauge. gauge. gauge. When I hang a picture in my house, I put 30 holes in the wall before that fucking thing is straight and level. bare minimum, bare fucking minimum. If I be there, If somebody handed me a goddamn space mirror whose tolerance for errors are measured in nanobots or whatever, there's literally no way.

There's fucking no way I wouldn't just like, I'd be that guy who just drops it and helplessly watches it float off in his face. Like, I just flock. Take a picture of it. But I think. I think. All right, so since that first servicing mission,

the Hubble has returned some of the most iconic images in the history of science. So one immediately recognizable image is a five light year tendril of cosmic dust at the heart of the eagle nebula dubbed the Pillars of Creation. There's the edge on view of the Subrero galaxy, the Vermilion appendages of the butterfly galaxy, the diaphanus curtains of stellar nurseries,

all instantly recognizable as Hubble image. Now there's a reason to get an Oculus guys, right there. Fuck, that's the reason. Fuck a nebulous. Absolutely. The most importantly, Eli doesn't have to tie his shoes with laces. $10 billion. Well spent. No, no, $10 billion. We got some really good screen savers. Okay. We really did. We did. But unless we spent some more money over the last 10 years on top of that. But I'd say the single most profound image,

if not the most important, ever captured by the Hubble or by anyone, is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image. This is the one where they just focused on a tiny point of darkness in the middle of the sky over a three and a half month period in late 2003. The image looks back approximately 13 billion years and contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies.

It is the single most humbling image a puny fucker like you or I could possibly look at. Some guy Googles it and he's just like, whatever, my kid could paint that. Splash, splash, splash. I should note though, that not everybody in the world of astronomy has convinced that the Hubble was worth the investment. I mean, sure, I captured some amazing pictures and it did really good science. According to the Wiki, over 15,000 papers based on Hubble data have been published in peer reviewed journals. That being said, it's crazy fucking expensive.

Right, it costs 4.7 billion to build, store, and launch, but maintaining it has cost even more. Over the first 20 years of operation, the cost to keep in the lights on and this thing and the lens defrosted was $5.3 billion. So, the comparison offered in the Wiki is the William Herschel telescope. It's a ground based telescope that's cited in about one 15th as many papers as the Hubble Space Telescope and cost about 1% as much to maintain. base telescope that's cited in about one 15th as many papers as the Hubble space telescope and cost about one percent as much to maintain.

You know, the craziest thing about all those Hubble papers is that somehow the readership is less than the total number of space telescopes we have. I like the defrosting matters too. I'm picturing like an astronaut being like, just getting back out of it, having to go scrape it with the little thing. Yeah, I don't know that they can do. Honey, can you warm up my space telescope? I gotta go to work in an hour.

We gotta get one of those keyless ones so I can do it from the shower. Just some guy stay there. We're gonna go back. You gotta push the front window button and crack the window a little bit. Your old friend always knows how to do it, but you can't figure it out. How can you not figure that out?

Of course, what goes up must come down are a series of words that aren't true, especially when you're talking about space shit, but people say I'm together like that anyway, and they're apropos now, uh, whether we're talking about the Hubble, um, if it's not boosted into a higher orbit, it would fall back to, or sometime between 20, 28 and 20, uh, now the original plan was that we'd eventually decommission it and then spend a, send a space shuttle out there and pick it up and then we'd hang it in this Smithsonian or something. But since we don't actually have space shuttles anymore and just landing one

with a space telescope, but it would have been stupid dangerous to begin with. We had to scrap that plan. It's not like we have some way of boosting it all, like worked out or anything, though, but don't worry. I mean, how long could it possibly be until 2028? All right. And in case you're curious, yes, large chunks of the Hubble would survive reentry. So, you know, look for a coming soon to a living room near you. Now you care

about science. Okay. Now, now you care. I'm just hoping Taco Bell does that thing again where we all win a free taco if it hits their side. I'm sure they will. You guys remember that? Yeah, I do. All right, no one. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? The most effective thing ever done in the history of astronomy was like, God damn Taco Bell ad. Ha ha question time. Are you ready? I am ready.

All right, now I'm gonna go first. When this space telescope reenters, we should name the atmospheric phenomenon. What should it be called? A, smoke and mirrors, B, the Death Star, or C, the Drop of Maddick Hubble. That's, all right.

I think, honestly, I've got to, because NASA's needed one for so long, I think be the depth. That is true. That is true. All right, Noah, question for you as well. What is NASA hiding? I'm just asking.

I don't know. I know you know. You have to tell us. Nothing, it's all public. You have to tell us. You know that, I'm telling you, you see it, I'm telling us go public to just turn it down for a second and see what happened on 9-11. We shot down that plane.

Oh, they're afraid too. All right. Noah, what is the best argument in defense of the Hubble project? Hey, it might find us the planet. We can mess up after we're done with this one. We've killed just over 1,571 challengers worth of Afghani civilians since 2007. Oh, see, NASA receives 0.4% of our nation's budget. By contrast, imagine the Pugs Health Insurance receives 2.4% of this podcast budget.

I'm doing a secret answer. D we would have killed more brown people with that money had it not been for the telescope. Oh, incorrect. The Pugs Insurance one. Somehow, Eli won. I don't know. I'm not even know how this game works good job. I don't know

Thank you. Thank you job. I will Shake things up a bit someone who hasn't done an essay for a while. I'm gonna choose Cecil Okay, all right sounds good. All right. Well for Cecil he know what and Eli. I'm Tom I'm Tom even if not for those guys, actually. Anyway, thank you for listening to Noah's microscope story or whatever that was. If you haven't had enough of us yet,

we do some other stuff, but I'm not telling you what, head over to citationpod.com and look around, and you'll figure it out. Next week, Cecil will learn us all about something, but only if some percentage of you donate money. So be the change you want to see in the world. That's all I'm saying, and be the change that gives us money and helps feed our families. By heading over to patreon.com slash citation pod.

You should also give us a five star review everywhere you can, but especially on iTunes and the like, you'll free to rate us on open table, but that's not going to do anything. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Sir, sir, sorry to barge in, but we've discovered life on Absalom Prime,

real, sentient life. This could mean first contact. Um, I don't know. I don't know about that. Or else the Chinese will get their first. One million dollars for you. That's, that's not a real number, sir. Still nerd.

You can have it.