The Atlantic

Galaxy Brain Is Real

Looking at the long views from the Hubble space telescope might be good for you.
Source: NASA / The Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA

In December of 1995, astronomers around the world were vying for a chance to use the hottest new tool in astronomy: the Hubble space telescope. Bob Williams didn’t have to worry about all that. As the director of the institution that managed Hubble, Williams could use the telescope to observe whatever he wanted. And he decided to point it at nothing in particular.

Williams’s colleagues told him, as politely as they could, that this was an awful idea. But Williams had a hunch that Hubble would see something worthwhile. The telescope had the glow of faraway galaxies, and the longer Hubble gazed out in one

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