Ethan Siegel is a theoretical astrophysicist living in Portland,
Oregon, who specializes in cosmology. He has been writing about
the Universe for everyone since 2008, and can’t wait for the
launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. A different version of
this post appeared on his blog, Starts With a Bang. “It is by
going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” –Joseph Campbell
One of the bravest things that was ever done with the Hubble
Space Telescope was to find a patch of sky with absolutely
nothing in it—no bright stars, no nebulae, and no known
galaxies—and observe it. Not just for a few minutes, or an hour,
or even for a day. But orbit-after-orbit, for a huge amount of
time, staring off into the nothingness of empty space, recording
image after image of pure darkness. What would we find, out
beyond the limits of what we could see? Something? Nothing?
After a total of more than 11 days of observing this tiny area
of the sky, this is what we