Inverse - 🌌 Two stunning new views from space

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August 03 2022

After years of delays and months of fine-tuning, the James Webb Space Telescope is finally getting down to business. After the first few science images, it’s been a little quiet — after all, science takes time — but the steady trickle that’s come in the last few weeks has been no less dazzling. Take, for instance, the just-released image of the Cartwheel Galaxy. The galaxy is 500 million light years away, and was once a spiral like the Milky Way, but an interloper galaxy shot it like a bullseye and threw that all into chaos. That collision gave the galaxy its distinctive shape. Webb’s new image shows it in extraordinary detail — and the infrared bandwidths it can see in are capable of revealing new details impossible by Webb’s older cousin, the Hubble Space Telescope.

We’ve had just one month with a fully armed and operational Webb Telescope, so we’re just getting started — it has enough fuel to last 20 years.

Consider the Cartwheel a main event to a little Inverse carnival today, to which I want to pretend I’m not the clown. If you like bullseyes like the one that took out Cartwheel’s earlier incarnation, you might be disappointed to hear that Bullet Train is a miss. But our interview with Batman scribe Scott Snyder can bring you back to the show. And we’ve got a few more stellar surprises in store …

What's New

HEADS UP!

Rockets

Another Chinese rocket makes an uncontrolled re-entry to Earth

Well, it happened again: A Long March 5B rocket, launched by China, made an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere on July 30. Thankfully, it didn’t hit land.

The massive rocket weighs 22.5 metric tons and is not the first of its kind to make a chaotic landing after a brief trip to space. A report from the China Manned Space Agency states that the rocket mostly burned up in the atmosphere and landed in the ocean.

But the unpredictability of an uncontrolled rocket hurtling back toward Earth once again raised alarm for scientists and government agencies.

Behold!

Space

New Webb image reveals a dynamic and "rare" galaxy

The spokes of the Cartwheel galaxy shine like never before, thanks to the peering prowess of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

This new image is gorgeous, no doubt. But its beauty is also functional, because it can help answer modern questions about how galaxies morph over time. About 25 percent of all galaxies are currently merging with others, and even more are probably gravitationally interacting, according to the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

It’s our destiny, too: The Milky Way will collide and merge with the Andromeda Galaxy billions of years from now, and it may be exchanging stars with closer celestial bodies.

Take a closer look

Look!

Science

NASA publishes new image of a traveling star

Like the sea that ripples in front of a traveling ship, so does a magnificent shockwave of gas precede a fast-flying star.

On July 25, NASA published a new view of the moving star Zeta Ophiuchi that merges an existing infrared image of this bright object with X-ray data. Most of the details in this composite image — the shock wave in red, the filaments of former star material in green, and the background stars — are visible thanks to infrared data that the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope collected ten years ago.

Inverse Interview

Comics

The writer who redefined Batman is blazing an independent new path

Scott Snyder is feeling more like himself these days.

His work as a comic book writer redefined Batman and the DC Universe in the 2010s. Now, three years after his exclusive contract with DC Comics ended, Snyder is running wild with an expanding library of original comics.

He’s still wistful about Batman, sure. Snyder created the evil Court of Owls, which will appear in the new video game Gotham Knights, and Matt Reeves’ The Batman paid homage to the innovations of his comics. But Snyder tells Inverse he wouldn’t trade his current creative freedom for anything else.

Learn more

Review:

Movies

Entertainment

Bullet Train proves Hollywood can still move backward

Bullet Train, an adaptation of the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka from John Wick co-director David Leitch, is what you get when you take a pulsating thriller about assassins on a train and overblow it with hundreds of millions of dollars in visual effects, A-list actors, gratuitous cameos, and a meandering plot that doesn’t know how to stay on course.

While Bullet Train does succeed in entertaining with pleasing action choreography, it’s never as clever as it thinks it is nor as exhilarating as it ought to be. Sure, you could turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. But where is that really getting you?

Read our review

Meanwhile...

This novel technology could jump-start electric vehicle production

Young Avengers could be Marvel’s biggest Phase 6 surprise

'Andor' trailer brings back 'Rogue One's most impressive trick

"Woke GTA" is the best thing that could happen to the franchise

Today in history: On August 3, 1984, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton won the all-around event at the Los Angeles Games, becoming the first American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

Song of the day: "Music Sounds Better With You," by Stardust

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