this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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It's so blue.
Like, I know it's not news. And I know in "true color" it's closer to grey. But Jupiter was not blue when I was a kid. It's just so much more colorful. So much more going on. so much more dynamic and complicated.
I cannot comprehend how anyone could ever think sending probes out to take pictures is a waste of money, even ignoring all the real and applicable science that can come from it.
I mean, if it's not a true color photo and they added the blue for informational display reasons, then the blueness of this photo isn't really a meaningful part of it to get excited about. (Sorry to be a downer.)
With that said, this photo IS something to get excited about because (based on the post title) it shows a part of the planet in a way never seen before, and it shows it in astounding clarity. And i absolutely agree that NASA science missions are enormously worthwhile.
False color can also just be a more visible way to display a range of frequencies that wouldn't be visible to the human eye anyway. Take the images from the James Webb Telescope for example. The JWT operates in the infrared, but it can see more than just one infrared wavelength and can differentiate between them. Rather than showing three or more grayscale images, you can layer them over each other in different colors or hues and create a single image. If you need the individual grayscale images, they exist, but that's not what usually ends up in communities like this one.
People are like why do X when Y is still a problem?
I get that but the world is big why not do both?
Comedians and similar people who make content out of stuff they see in the news seem to be especially prone to this kind of thinking. They see an article about a phyics discovery or a math theorem or a sociology experiment and say something about science should focus on solving world hunger or curing cancer instead.
Seemingly ignorant of the facts that
a) Science isn't a monolith, and a sociologist or mathematician isn't a virologist or oncologist or whatever else would be needed for the problem they're ranting about.
b) Even if someone happened to be in the correct field for the problem the idiot is ranting about, they often couldn't help with the problem anyway because they're lacking the required experience and knowledge and just throwing people at the problem doesn't help if those people are grad students or barely postgrads.
If we want to solve global warming and survive as a society, extraplanetary research is crucial. When we look outward, we learn about things that apply inward. NASA has something like a 17-1 return on investments. Every dollar we put into NASA returns so much more in tech and knowledge we can apply to help people here. It's always a good investment.