The New Yorker & Me: August 16, 2021 Issue

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Thursday, August 19, 2021

August 16, 2021 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Rivka Galchen’s “The Youthful Universe.” It’s about the amazing seven-ton, ten-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope, which, when launched, will travel 1.5 million kilometres from Earth and look back thirteen billion years. Galchen beautifully describes how it will operate:

On its way, the telescope will slowly unfurl five silvery winglike layered sheets of Kapton foil, about as large as a tennis court. These sheets, each thinner than notebook paper, will function as a gigantic parasol, protecting the body of the telescope from the light and the heat of the sun, moon, and Earth. In this way, the J.W.S.T. will be kept nearly as dark and as cold as outer space, to insure that distant signals aren’t washed out. Then eighteen hexagons of gold-coated beryllium mirror will open out, like an enormous, night-blooming flower. The mirrors will form a reflecting surface as tall and as wide as a house, and they will capture light that has been travelling for more than thirteen billion years.

For me, the J.W.S.T.’s most interesting capacity is its ability to study exoplanets, i.e., planets outside our solar system. Galchen says, “The J.W.S.T. will be able to describe the atmospheres of these planets, possibly detecting free oxygen or other gases—potential signs of life.”

Galchen’s similes are delightful, e.g., “The Hubble telescope was finally launched in April, 1990, and it sent back fuzzy images of spiral galaxies that looked like melted glaze on a galactic cinnamon roll.” I enjoyed “The Youthful Universe” immensely.