Over at Cosmic Variance, my fellow astronomy blogger Julianne Dalcanton is looking for opinions. She’s writing an article about the scientific impact of Hubble, and she’s looking to see what others come up with. Webrainstorming, if you will (did I coin a new word there? I think maybe I did).
This is scientific, not cultural impact. So no things about the public being more aware of astronomy and whatnot. I can think of two things immediately:
1) We’ve watched the evolution of the supernova 1987A from just three years after it detonated to the present. We’ve seen the changes in the supernova debris at it has expanded, and we’re seeing the impact — literally — of it on the surrounding ring of material. It’s that ring that I studied to get my degree, which is why I thought of this particular example right away. We also saw that the supernova is surrounded by three rings, which made it unique… until more objects like it were found using Hubble and Spitzer.
2) The other impact isn’t scientific but on science itself. Hubble cost a fortune: $6 billion and counting. There are things Hubble can do that ground-based telescopes simply cannot, so comparisons are difficult. But even an expensive telescope on the surface costs more than an order of magnitude less. Is it worth it? Many scientists spent their careers working on Hubble, having their scientific progress ground (haha) to a halt, and some even became pariahs because of it. Had it been managed differently, had it been downsized, had it been not such a political tool, how would that have affected the science itself? We can only speculate — which I generally frown upon — but in this case a little retrospection might be good. We’ll be faced with similar decisions in the future, and of course we already are: going back to the Moon, going to Mars, building the Space Station, and more.
What do you think? First, go see what Julianne wrote and what her commenters said, then add your own, either here or there. I’m sure she’ll read what you write here!
August 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
It is said that truth is invaluable. It can also be said that Hubble made discoveries that would have not happened in the time frame that they did with any other instrument. So, transitively, the truths that Hubble uncovered far exceed the cost of the instrument itself.
Given the incredibly miniscule percentage that HST operation has had on the federal budget since its inception, it can be described as nothing but a bargain. It has ignited interest in science and astronomy in children, it has helped us learn more about the Universe (or Multiverse?) we live in and it will continue to do so for some time to come.
We need more and better space based telescopes. This is a Golden Age of Astronomy, one akin to Galileo’s time. Given the payback, the cost is trivial.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:39 am
What kills me about Hubble is that nobody involved understood the concept of marginal cost. We could have built two or three of these puppies for only slightly more than we spent on one, and granted scientists so much more observing time.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:40 am
One of the big impacts on science I think Hubble has had, is the fact that spaced based telescopes are an invaluable tool. Hubble is paving the way for new and future instruments that, hopefully, will be understood as necessary to the cause of enriching the knowledge of mankind.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Hubble rocks. The science return on that amazing instrument is enormous (unlike, say, the ISS). The Ultra Deep shots were probably my favorite.
Can’t wait for the Webb scope to get launched. These are the kinds of projects that makes supporting NASA worth it.
And I definitely agree that we are in a Golden Age of Astronomy! COBE, Chandra, etc, etc- simply amazing what we are learning with these instruments.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Also, think of all of those galaxies discovered in the deepest abyss of time that couldn’t have been discovered with ground based telescopes. (or could they?)
August 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
At that integrated cost, I still wonder aloud if it might have made more sense to put 4 2-meter telescopes at L2 (UV imaging, UV spectra, Optical imaging+spectra, NIR imaging). We would have gotten the same results as Hubble, but on a shorter timescale. Heck, I think we should do so now anyway, since after Hubble, there will be no UV spectroscopy and imaging left……
August 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I don’t think you can separate the scientific impact from the public/cultural impact. Hubble has tremendously increased interest in science in general and astronomy in particular. That tends to improve funding for everyone as well as helping to keep the anti-scientists at bay.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Hubble did good science and was certainly a great achievement. It was also a maintenance nightmare, plagued with problems, and generally a typical bad, grossly expensive design of the shuttle area. The fact that the shuttle is the only way the thing could have been maintained worries me no end — risking lives for hubble is not worth it.
I’m with those who favor a networked approach — a number (possibly a large number) of lower-cost telescopes in orbit that would have been much more cost effective. This would have provided both a large baseline when needed (several telescopes could have been the same type) and solid redundancy if there had been a failure. The telescope network would also have provided far more information than Hubble did and it would have been far easier to upgrade. Now with the shuttle nearing the end and no replacement in sight (NASA’s schedule has no credibility) perhaps such a network can be considered.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“Webrainstorming” will have to compete with the already pretty firmly established term “crowdsourcing,” but you never know…
I’m becoming more and more convinced that there’s no way things like Hubble won’t be used as a political tool. Looking ahead to future budgetary black holes like sending people back to the moon, we may be able to learn some lessons, but will the politicians?
August 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I think one of the biggest factors concerning Hubble’s worth came not from it’s successes, but from it’s initial failure. In 1993 Endeavour launched to fix the problems with Hubble’s vision, amongst other things. This mission was one of the most complicated missions ever attempted and the wealth of knowledge from that mission has yet to be exceeded. No doubt it cost enormous sums of money to fix those issues, but we learned more about operating in space from that single mission than any previous or subsequent mission launched. It was from that point on, because of the success of STS-61, that we were able to gain so much scientific information from Hubble.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Phil, could you expand on that a bit? Why were scientists branded pariahs? Or did they actually become pariahs of their own accord? How does Hubble fit into that?
I would to agree with Trebuchet, tho, that it’s hard to separate the cultural impact from the science. Maybe that’s just me as a non-professional scientist talking, but I think it’s impossible to separate anything from its public and social context, especially these days when the ivory towers are riddled with internet connections.
I think Hubble contributed to a huge paradigm shift about the way we think about visualizing the universe. Gone is the notion that any significantly remote or faint object is by definition going to remain largely invisible, unknowable, or at the least confined to fuzzy impressions on a photographic plate. The clarity of Hubble images, especially the deep sky stuff, has transformed the universe from a place dominated by bright stars with a bunch of hazy stuff in between, to a rich, full, detailed environment with nary an empty spot anywhere. At least that’s this non-pro’s take on it. Prolly off the mark quite a bit.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Sorry, one other thing comes to mind…
GalaxyZoo.
Involving the public in analyzing and classifying the myriad “fuzzy blobs” in Hubble deep sky images is a terrific way not only to get free data processing, but also involve the general public in real science. In the new age of massive data crunching, I think this sort of thing is going to be big.
If only a few thousand UFO nuts could be turned on to this process, maybe the thrill of science could replace the looniness of pseudoscience. On the other hand, they’d probably claim every other galaxy was a flying saucer.
I’d settle for one or two young kids getting excited about astronomy and going on to pursue careers in science.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I mentioned a few on Julianne’s post, but repeated here… (with some explanation for the non-professionals!)
– Globular cluster colour-magnitude diagrams. Figuring out how clusters fit into the whole picture of galaxy formation requires knowing their age and metallicity with as much precision as possible, which can be done well if you can measure the colour and magnitude of all of the stars within the cluster. But globular clusters are so dense that it’s very hard to measure those accurately from the ground – the field is too crowded. With HST, it became easy.
– Measuring the 3D structure of dark matter across the universe using weak gravitational lensing. Seeing that the structure of the dark matter at early times was less than it is now, exactly in line with what you’d expect from gravitational structure formation.
– Detection of gaps in dust disks around stars that are reasonable evidence of planets orbiting those stars.
– Distances to galaxies using surface brightness fluctuations (objects that are further away look smoother), which allowed us to detect structure along the line of sight in the Virgo and Fornax galaxy clusters.
[TMB]
August 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
You wants science? I gots your science right here: Hubble Deep Field. Yeah.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
“Webrainstorming” is even a web page…
http://webrainstorming.com/
August 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
kuhnigget: Galaxy Zoo works on Sloan data (from Apache Peak, New Mexico), not Hubble.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Lo siento Señor Presidente, the paternity of the word belongs to another group…..
“webrainstorming (Je viens d’inventer un mot”) ….”Just invented a word”
Fabulous blog!!!
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August 21st, 2008 at 2:20 pm
From the headline, you’d think Hubble had de-orbited.
“Webrainstorming” is a little unwieldy. I was going to suggest contract it to “webstorming,” except that’s not entirely original apparently.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=webstorming&btnG=Google+Search
August 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
@TMB:
My bad! I take it all back, then: Hubble sucks.
um…kidding.
August 21st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This is not a scientific contribution, although perhaps it’s an investment in future scientific contributions. I’ve been showing my daughter images from the Hubble Heritage website for 2 years now. She’s five and loves to climb into my lap and look at “Space Pictures” while I read the captions to her. Last week she explained (in 5 year old terms) what a nebula was to her grandfather.
We live in a red state and maybe, just maybe, what she’s seen will help inoculate her against the stupid which she will inevitably confront. Maybe she won’t be the only one inoculated. The Hubble Telescope might have been a poor investment in science in the short term but it’s impact on the popular conscious will be felt for years.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
A key concept to embrace is that the cultural impact generates scientific returns. The full impact of HST may not be truly realized for decades (and may be immeasurable). HST’s pop culture status has and will continue to help draw in funding for space science, but also consider HST is inspiring the next generation of astronomers, astrophysicists, and other scientists to go into those fields by showing them the wonders of the universe . In that way, consider HST to be Carl Sagan with more flash and less charisma.
20 or 30 years from now, maybe the next Einstein, Hawking, or Newton will credit HST for inspiring them to become a scientist.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I agree with Dagger that Hubbles “initial failiure” was one of its successes. No astronomer knew about a telescope named Hubble after its launch – and the crowd was laughing!
(next to many other reason why I love physics!)
But: The telescope went into all the brains. Everyone heard of it, everyone knew (and knows) about its existence – and I guess this was some kind of a “good” promotion for it.
And the astonishing, beautiful, awesome pics which everyone can admire now are a triumph of science. I love them. Maybe this is one reason I am about to make my Bachelor in (theoretical) astrophysics right now
August 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Hubble’s images are the wallpaper on just about everybody’s computer. The images have worked their way into the public consciousness like no other image set has. True, it was ridiculously expensive, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Let’s build Webb, ALMA and also do the TMT.
Rich
August 21st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
To Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum:
I have responded to your problem in the thread at “The magnetic tendrils of NGC 1275”.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:02 pm
This is on cultural impact, but…
I think the images returned by Hubble have helped the public understand the beauty and complexity of the universe. They’ve certainly helped explain why astronomers, pro and amateur, stare at the sky.
But I don’t think Hubble has helped the general public come to terms with the size and scale of space. I’ve talked to folks who think the ISS is as far away as the Moon because they remember it took Apollo a few days to get there, and because the networks usually say something like “the Shuttle has begun its three-day journey to the space station” rather than saying they’re waiting for their repective orbital paths to be amenable to rendevous. I.e., people think the Shuttle is spending 2 or 3 days moving out from Earth.
Sometime this week I heard a TV personality characterize the U.S. and Soviet space prorams of the 1960’s as “moving to the edges of the universe.”
People need to understand that, moving at the speed of their SUV, ISS is only a few hours overhead, but Mars, for example, is, umm, a really long way away.
August 21st, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hi Phil,
I think it is a mistake to disconnect the cultural impact from the scientific impact. The two are inexorably combined. By inspiring the public with such awesome images as it has produced, it has reached out to the next generation of scientists, and who knows what they will add to human knowledge and understanding. I myself was inspired to pursue a scientific career after watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series as a young boy.
On the second point, yes the telescope was expensive, but its profile itself will provide a payback. Do you think a politician is more likely to approve increased funding for science after seeing the ultra deep field photograph? or being presented with six new papers on X-ray emissions from an obscure pulsar categorized by a terrestrial facility? Sure you might do more science with equivalent earth based funding, but without the flair, that funding will unfortunately evaporate over time as we’ve seen with America’s particle accelerator programs.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
To Rebecca:
“Looking ahead to future budgetary black holes like sending people back to the moon, we may be able to learn some lessons.”
In what way is sending humans back to the moon a “budgetary black hole”.
NASA has a budget of $17,600,000,000 for fiscal year 2009. This is for manned and unmanned spaceflight, as well as research and developement of new technologies.
Contrast this with the DOD Research and Developement dept. which has a fiscal year 2009 budget of more than $80,000,000,000.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t see how any NASA project could be called a “budgetary black hole” when compared to numbers like what the DoD gets. Or even something like the Dept. of Education which has a budget of $90,000,000,000 plus next year.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound preachy, but, to think of NASA as wastefull when they get what, about 2.5% of the entire budget of the DOD just kinda gets to me. The science, technology and knowledge gained from NASA missions, even the failed ones, continues to amaze me.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
cost of Hubble = 6 billion
cost of most recent war = over 500 billion so far
estimated cost of 30 second commercial during the 2009 Super Bowl = 3 million
amount Americans spent on fast food in 2003 = 119 billion
I just don’t see Hubble as expensive. The knowledge it brings is something we all, as a species, will benefit from…humans, looking outward and discovering.
I’d give up cheeseburgers for a second Hubble without hesitation.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:28 pm
(and I do really like cheeseburgers)
August 21st, 2008 at 11:02 pm
The Hubble Space telescope & its team of operators is quite simply the gretaesty explorer in the history of Humanity.
It has taken us from the dusty deathn shroud of Eta Carinae’s swirling stellar nebuale clokaing the six million solar luminosities star
To mapping the round little world of Ceres
and mapping the ninth planet Pluto with its dark equatorial band and icecaps
All the way out to the colliding galaxies in their transitional splendour
The stars at the heart of M100
The X at thecore of the Whirlpool, M51
Out tothe ultimate depth of theultra-deep field toibringing us thesights ofnew found galaxies at the borders of visible spacetime.
Hubble is worth it! Heavens yes! The HST is one of our most fanatastic achievements ever & we should never forget it or cease marvelling at the things it has shown us from distances beyond anything our minds can imagine.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Eck! Blinking typos … Wish I could edit them out. Sigh.
Please BA plesaelet us edit here – & while I’m onrequests could you please bring us the second part of that “No green stars” thread too ..?
August 21st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Justcorbly wrote :
“People need to understand that, moving at the speed of their SUV, ISS is only a few hours overhead, but Mars, for example, is, umm, a really long way away.”
Here’s a few quotes about this which I’ll add here to put that in a bit more perspective :
“Space isn’t remote at all. Its only an hour away if your car could go straight upwards.”
- Sir Fred Hoyle, P.43, ‘The Wonderful World of Space’, Heather Couper, Octopus Books, 1980.
“If it were possible to drive straight from the Earth to Neptune, taking the shortest possible route and keeping up a steady 60 m.p.h., the journey would take nearly 5,200 years.”
- P. 57, ‘The Sky at night’, Patrick Moore, WW. Norton & Co, 1986.
&
“If you put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, that cathedral will be more densely packed with grains of sand than stars are found apart in space.”
- Sir James Jeans, British astronomer, quoted on page 28, ‘Skywatching’, David H. Levy, Ken Fin Books, 1995.
… & the nearest star is 4 years and many months away when you’re travelling at the speed of light which travels from Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and reaches Pluto in 330 minutes or about 5 & a half hours.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:17 pm
If nots not typos its italics! AArrrrgghh!!
_____________________________________________
Justcorbly wrote :
“People need to understand that, moving at the speed of their SUV, ISS is only a few hours overhead, but Mars, for example, is, umm, a really long way away.”
Here’s a few quotes about this which I’ll add here to put that in a bit more perspective :
“Space isn’t remote at all. Its only an hour away if your car could go straight upwards.”
- Sir Fred Hoyle, P.43, ‘The Wonderful World of Space’, Heather Couper, Octopus Books, 1980.
“If it were possible to drive straight from the Earth to Neptune, taking the shortest possible route and keeping up a steady 60 m.p.h., the journey would take nearly 5,200 years.”
- P. 57, ‘The Sky at night’, Patrick Moore, WW. Norton & Co, 1986.
&
“If you put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, that cathedral will be more densely packed with grains of sand than stars are found apart in space.”
- Sir James Jeans, British astronomer, quoted on page 28, ‘Skywatching’, David H. Levy, Ken Fin Books, 1995.
… & the nearest star is 4 years and many months away when you’re travelling at the speed of light which travels from Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and reaches Pluto in 330 minutes or about 5 & a half hours.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:01 am
Hubble did (and will continue to do so) some amazing, awesome and aweinspiring pictures – no questions there.
But (and im kind of sorry to say this) me favourite “Eye in Heaven” is still Cassini (i have the beautiful backlit Saturn pic as wallpaper on all my PCs)
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 am
Dagger fairly well took the wind out of my sails. Nevertheless, here’s my two cents of science from Hubble. It’s construction and repairs [thank you]
taught us the science of building in space on a previously unknown precision. The lessons learned have gone toward later additions to the ISS and I’m sure will impact future construction of even spaceships or anything we will ever construct in space.
I know that construction and engineering are not considered science on earth. But those activities will surely impact space science in years to come.
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:47 am
From Phil’s article:
“There are things Hubble can do that ground-based telescopes simply cannot, so comparisons are difficult. But even an expensive telescope on the surface costs more than an order of magnitude less. Is it worth it?”
Let’s say there’s a wall in front of you that you want to see over, and you need a ten-foot stepladder to do it. The ten-foot ladder costs $100, but a seven-foot ladder is an order of magnitude less. You could buy TEN seven-foot ladders for the same price. But you still couldn’t see over the wall.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 am
I know that construction and engineering are not considered science on earth. But those activities will surely impact space science in years to come.
Amen, Don…and scientists are some of the worst of the worst where that is concerned. They just take it for granted.
A professional astronomer asked me last night what was the whole fuss about returning to the moon and I asked him in return why he even bothered looking into the sky.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
A few people have mentioned the Ultra Deep Field photos. I have one of those photos as my computer wallpaper and as a poster on my wall. I ponder its significance often. The universe is not merely huge, it’s inconceivably huge! When a person of faith suggests that the odds of life arising through chance is astronomically small (pick some odds – how about 10 trillion to 1?), I just point to that picture and say “you do the math.”
J. D.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I can’t believe we’d even debate the value of Hubble. I believe Phil, et al, are overthinking this a bit. The Hubble, as a government-funded endeavor, is going to cost more than it should. We’re all grownups and we all recognize that, right?
And because Hubble is taxpayer-funded, it’ll also be politicized. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less about some random astronomer’s career. It seems to me that if careerism ever raised its ugly head around the use and abuse of Hubble, that’s the astronomers’ problem, or, at most, astronomy’s problem, not mine as a taxpayer or as a “consumer” of the science they produce.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
All praise of Hubble aside, as a person old enouth to remember the return of Skylab, I see the words “Hubble” and “Impact” and I reach for my hardhat.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
[...] Hubble’s impact Share and Enjoy: [...]
August 27th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Dagger said:
>In 1993 Endeavour launched to fix the problems with Hubble’s vision, amongst other things. This mission was one of the most complicated missions ever attempted and the wealth of knowledge from that mission has yet to be exceeded. No doubt it cost enormous sums of money to fix those issues, but we learned more about operating in space from that single mission than any previous or subsequent mission launched.
I think you are overstating. I know the original Hubble repair was significant, but not to the degree you state. First off, Hubble was designed from the ground up to be servicable with Shuttle. Tools were developed specifically for use with Hubble from the Shuttle. The repair in question was not quite within the original planned scope, but it wasn’t out of the ballpark, either. Yes, STS-61 was a big step in oribital EVA activity, though lunar EVAs had already reached those amounts of hours (lengths per EVA and repetition over days). Subsequent EVAs have included Intelsat recapture (3 person EVA, grab by hand, not tool), and ISS assembly and maintenance, including EVAs without Shuttle support (relying on SAFER as the backup safety device).
Though the upcoming Hubble servicing mission does have some new challenges.
SnakeHandler said:
> It was also a maintenance nightmare, plagued with problems, and generally a typical bad, grossly expensive design of the shuttle area.
That is an inaccurate and unfair description.
> The fact that the shuttle is the only way the thing could have been maintained worries me no end — risking lives for hubble is not worth it.
Lives get risked for a lot of things. People risk their lives to go to the mall. It is important to consider the amount of risk against the payoff.
True, for Hubble to be serviced, Shuttle is the only existing choice. True, an alternate plan could have been chosen that didn’t consider maintenance and servicing. It’s even arguable that given the launch costs of Shuttle, it would have been cheaper to make several Hubbles and launch them sequentially rather than try to reuse/upgrade the existing hardware. But given the existing design, it makes a lot of sense to complete the already planned mission to reservice and upgrade again, and this time prep for future controlled reentry that makes for a safer end of mission.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:36 am
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