Katia Krafft, wearing an aluminized suit, standing near a lava burst at the Krafla Volcano, in Iceland. (Photo courtesy of Image’Est)
“You’re looking at the space pictures, aren’t you?” my daughter asked as she came into the kitchen, where I was supposed to be making her lunch. I’d been looking at the images released by NASA from the James Webb Telescope off and on for several days, forcing my family to gather around my laptop to rhapsodize with me, returning again and again when I was alone. Even at age seven, my daughter understood that the pull of those images had sucked me out of the orbit of ordinary life.
I am very much an amateur when it comes to scientific cosmology, and I know only as much as one can learn reading science blogs for laypeople and watching NASA explainer videos. But I recognized the power of fascination—and even something of the…
