KYLE TROUTMAN
An exciting and adventurous look outward this week was tempered by news that should compel us to look inward with equal intensity.
On Monday, NASA released the first photo from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the deepest infrared imager of the universe.
A replica of the Hubble Deep Field taken in 1995, the image of JWST is mind-blowing, impressive and also a little scary.
The image captures 24-millionths of the entire sky, equivalent to the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, or a tennis ball from 100 meters (328 feet).
Despite being such a tiny dot in the universe, the image contains thousands of galaxies, not stars, not planets: galaxies.
For some perspective, our Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars and is only half the size of the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.
Light from the galaxies in the JWST photo took billions of years to reach the cameras, and some of these galaxies were created just a billion years after the big bang.
The reds, greens, and blues in the photo dance and curve due to gravitational pull, and the vastness of the photo, when you think about it, is hard to fathom.
When I look at this picture, I can only think of one thing, what else is out there? Soon, we may know.
JWST has the ability to scan planets for signatures of water and the likelihood of sustaining life, potentially locating habitable planets for humans. We’re obviously a long way from going to another solar system, but the idea is exciting.
Monday’s exciting news of our achievement was countered Tuesday by the release of multiple videos from outside and inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers and wounded 16 others.
The video is not for the faint of stomach. It shows the shooter has crashed a truck outside the building, shoots the Good Samaritans, and then heads toward the school firing shots. By that time, several calls to 911 had been made.
The shooter is then shown from an interior camera, entering the building and entering a classroom.
The journalists who published the video removed the sounds of the screaming children, deeming it too graphic. Frankly, the sound of gunfire is more than enough to turn even the most hardened of stomachs.
From there, 77 minutes pass before the police act and finally kill the shooter. During that time, 911 calls were still being made from inside the building and police were being urged to take action from both dispatchers and bystanders.
The video was hard to watch and made me angry.
It made me angry that there are people in the world who would do what the shooter did, and it made me angry that he wasn’t stopped sooner.
We have to find ways to reach people before they kill 21 people in an elementary school, or we have to find a way to stop them from doing it.
As mad as I was, I was equally mad watching for over an hour as law enforcement from every possible jurisdiction, from the city to the feds, stood back and did nothing.
No matter where you stand on gun rights, here’s the problem: If we’re not going to take steps like other first world countries have to reduce the impact of firearms, we have to have people who are willing and ready to putting their lives on the line again and again and again and again.
These kinds of shootings won’t stop on their own. This year alone there have been 27 school shootings, with 24 students and three adults killed, and another 56 injured.
Either we act, or we live with the consequences, and I do not find the previous figures acceptable.
The JWST will no doubt continue to provide amazing images and news, like the other four photos released on Tuesday. If the school shooting problem is currently at the Hubble stage, I hope we can find JWST-level clarity and before the time it takes light to reach our latest telescopic achievement.
Kyle Troutman has been the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014. In 2017, he was named the William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for Newspapers. He can be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktoutman@cherryroad.com.
“In the email to parents, the high school apologized for the stress the situation has caused the Monett families… The next question is: Would ‘Dear Martin’ be considered by this committee, and if it’s not allowed, why?”