Updated Hubble Telescope

I love the Hubble Telescope because it provides such interesting information and images that make me want to dream about what kind of life lives out at the edges of the Universe. I thought it very clever that the movie "Contact" based on the book by the same name and written by Carl Sagan, used a variety of images produced by the Hubble Telescope in the opening sequences of the movie.
Hubble is still hard at work providing insight into the far reaches of the Universe.

Astronaut repairmen had hardly finished tightening the last stubborn bolts on the Hubble Space Telescope last summer when astronomers set the controls on the refurbished telescope to the dim and distant past.The result was a new long-distance observing record. Astronomers announced in a series of papers over the fall and in a news conference last week that Hubble had recorded images of the earliest and most distant galaxies ever seen, blurry specks of light that burned brightly only 600 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang.The specks are clouds only one-twentieth the size of the Milky Way galaxy and only 1 percent of its mass, and seem to show the lingering effects of the first generation of stars to form in the universe in that they get bluer the farther back you go in time.

You can read more about it HERE.

Thoughts on the "Dangers" of Science Fiction, Quotes by Isaac Asimov

I was thinking about Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan and some of my other favorite science fiction authors because an article was circulating warning people that science fiction literature is a danger due to the themes of "godlessness" and the lack of belief or personal beliefs of some of the most famous authors of all time. In my thinking, they are famous because there is a basic truth and logic to what they write about, for example, in Contact, the truth is what is sought, now what is wrong in pursuing the truth? What is wrong with logically approaching any situation in life and making informed choices based on fact? In most science fiction stories, science, data, and logic are used to approach problems.
If you choose to look at science fiction literature from a pragmatic point of view, it is fiction, a story that is made up to read and enjoy and then get on with your life. You can ascribe any meaning you like to the work of fiction, end of story.

Here are some of my favorite quotes by Isaac Asimov:
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Science can be introduced to children well or poorly. If poorly, children can be turned away from science; they can develop a lifelong antipathy; they will be in a far worse condition than if they had never been introduced to science at all.

Here is a link to the article warning people about science fiction.