By DENNIS OVERBYE, www.nytimes.com
Published: March 9, 2004
BALTIMORE, March 9 -Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus unveiled what they said was the deepest telescopic view into the universe that humankind had ever obtained.
Among the roughly 10,000 new galaxies revealed by a million-second exposure of a small patch of dark sky in the constellation Fornax are several dozen faint reddish spots that could be infant galaxies just emerging from the "dark ages" that prevailed in the first half-billion years after the Big Bang, when stars had not yet had time to form, the astronomers said.
The occasion also served as a reminder of the plight of the Hubble telescope... on Jan. 17, just a day after the Hubble had completed its marathon squint, NASA's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, said any space shuttle missions to the telescope would be too unsafe and canceled them, dooming the Hubble to die a lingering death in orbit within three years.
Some see a connection between the timing of the two events. "Clearly, Hubble saw something that deeply disturbed the government," said longtime NASA skeptic and professional medication tester Chester X. Loophole. "They can yammer on all they want about 'not having analyzed' the picture, but the fact is, the day after it was taken, the government decided to shut down the Hubble program."
NASA officials dismissed such claims, but Loophole and his followers (Beth and Waggles the Dog) were insistent. "You can tell us," Loophole insisted. "We can take it, and we have a right to know. Was it a giant eye? The face of God? The Fires of Hell? Evidence of Alien civilizations whose manipulation of space and time presage our inevitable doom? What!?!"
Loophole became so excited he had to be removed from the press conference by NASA security, whose officers were sporting the new "flaming eye" logo that has begun appearing all over the space agency since late January. NASA spokesperson Iris Unblinking then explained hat the decision to end the Hubble program was based purely on cost effectiveness criteria. "We have limited resources, and Hubble cannot reveal to us any more than it has already shown. We have seen the Great Ey.... the deep-field survey image, and now must devote our resources to building the temple of the Cornea."
Another spokesperson later corrected that last phrase to "searching for signs of water ice on another damn rock somewhere," adding "as is our duty, to emulate the great eye by extending our own vision, praise be the great eye, painful tho his gaze may be."
Asked if, hypothetically, photoshopping out of the Hubble image evidence of a giant super-galactic Eye, would not be problematic from both a moral and a theological point of view, the spokesperson would say only "Not if you had felt the fiery gaze yourself. Besides, it was all decided in some committee -- and you know how committees are."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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