One Loony Conspiracy Theory-Mine-Bites The Dust

Yeah, I've been hanging around Far Left newsgroups for way too long, I've caught something contagious. I usually like to ridicule them for such nuttiness as the proliferation of Zionist conspiracy theories and how the 9/11 attacks were staged, but like they say, when you lie down with dogs, you can catch fleas.

When I first heard that the Hubble Space Telescope was due to be discontinued, the first thing I thought of was how this sounded like it might have an intentional relationship with George W. Bush's own coziness with the equally looney far right. In fact, this news was given out at about the same time that Bush was somewhat encouraging the teaching, as science, in public schools of what has been termed Intelligent Design-just another barely disguised (though this is denied) code word for "creationism".

It's proponents are quick to defend it by asserting they want to offer it as a scientific theory in addition to, not instead of, the teaching of evolution.

When I heard the news about Hubble being allowed to die, I made a connection between the two, and immediately jumped the gun by theorizing that the Hubble Space Telescope might prove to be somewaht of an embarrassment to Bush's major Christian backers. After all, it has already demonstrated what science has long ago claimed, that the universe was created billions of years ago, not the six to ten thousand years that many conservative Christians claimed, and to a large degree still claim.

What if it further established evidence of the Big Bang? There would be no further need for debate on that score. And I had an idea that Bush, for all his much vaunted religious faith, would not be counting on seeing God up there giving us all a high five in a billions years ago preparation for what he in his infinite wisdom would know would be our eventual snapshot into time and space.

Sure, the religous right could still spin it, but fewer people would believe the spin. More to the point, it would be an embarrassment to the people who have spent decades decrying and even ridiculing the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory, should they suddenly be presented with photographic proof of the event.

The Hubble Telescope hadn't merely been eliminated as a program whose usefulness had run it's course, I decided-it had been assassinated. One of my formative posts on Blogspot was on this very subject.

I wish I had known Zandperl then, whose blog, Modern Science, is a member of the blogroll, she could have saved me the trouble of writing what I thought at the time was an interesting and provocative post. Come to find out, the Hubble is going to be replaced, in 2013, by an even better space telescope, and in the meantime there is one already that might in time outshine Hubbles vaunted accomplishments. But the new one in question, the one scheduled to be launched no earlier than June of 2013, will utilize infrared photography, in a cold setting shoelded from the sun, that will enable it to detect the formation of the earliest of stars.

Finally, I also understand that, as of this stage of the game, there is no way to view the actual Big Bang (itself, incidentally, probably an event of billions of years in duration), as the initial result of that event was a radioactive cloud that seems to have permeated the entire universe, making viewing past that point in time impossible.

In other words, this is in itself somewhat proof of the Big Bang. Who knows, someday we might eventually be able to pierce the veil. There would probably be really nothing to see but a vast explosion of light. Now that would be kind of hard to spin.