May 23 2005
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Bad to the Cone
Note added May 30, 2005: This entry was chosen to be part of the Carnival of the Godless, a blog carnival that is not so much about atheism as it is about seeing the world from a godless perspective (i.e., not using a supernatural being to explain things). There are many fascinating blog entries listed there.
Some time ago, I decided to become prostrate to the gods of advertising, in order to justify to my wife the vast amounts of money I was throwing away on my website. I got Google Ads, which are supposed to be targeted ads based on the content of the page on which they are served. So if you have a page about, oh say left-handed pipe cleaners, then Google will serve ads on your page about pipes, left-handed can openers, and (it wouldn’t surprise me) a homeopathic lip cancer “remedy”.
I deal with a lot of silly anti-science hoaxery, and so, ironically, I get a lot of ads that actually go against my own fight. My page about the Apollo Moon hoax, for example, might have an ad for a book promoting the hoax, or a video about UFOs. I can filter such nonsense ads, but I have actually run out of allowed filters at Google. I figure what the heck, if someone reads my page, they are (hopefully) unlikely to buy any kind of garbage advertised by these wacky places. And since the advertiser pays anyway, it’s win-win for the good guys. *
Still, the irony gets to me sometimes. Google served up an ad on one of my pages recently for a company selling pictures of the Cone Nebula as seen by Hubble. Drink in its beauty for a moment…
… and now indulge me as I regale you with what you are seeing.
The Cone Nebula is just one part of a vast collection of gas and dust. It’s length is about 7 light years — 70 trillion kilometers. It is 2500 light years away, which means that, if you were to look through a telescope at the Cone, the fleet of photons hitting your retina would have left the nebula when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon, and when the good people of Athens decided to experiment with democracy as a form of government.
Near the Cone (off the top of this image) is a very young, very massive star. This star blows an ethereal but violent wind of gas off its surface, a super-solar wind, if you will. Countless millions of tons of gas moving at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour slam into the Cone, sculpting it into the shape we see. Inside the Cone is a secret– a nest of young stars, newly born, struggling to cast off the cocoon of gas and dust in which they are shrouded. Some of these stars will explode in tormented deaths in a relatively short time, while others will still be steadily shining well after our own Sun has faded and gone.
When you look at this picture, you are seeing the interplay of forces both subtle and gross, matter and energy interacting on a scale too grand for humans to comprehend, and spanning a timescale that dwarfs even the long, long history of humans as we currently know ourselves.
But for some people, that isn’t enough. It’s hard to imagine– who wouldn’t be satisfied with such glorious knowledge?
Why, the folks who bought an ad that Google placed on my website. Those people think they see the face of Jesus in it.
Yes, really.
I could go on and on about this topic of seeing faces in semi-random patterns, especially religious ones, even sometimes
seeing Jesus in astronomical objects.
But I won’t, at least not too much. I will show you something that galled me: just in case you don’t see a face (and instead, if you have decent eyesight, and think it looks more like an infected fingertip or, uh, something a lot worse), the folks behind that advertisement want to help you along, so they Photoshopped a cheesy drawing into the nebula. Keep your eyes– if you can– on the animated image below from their website.
Feh. At least sometimes the objects in which people see religious icons at least have some vague resemblance to the icons, but this? Let me repeat myself: feh.
How many times have I heard that religion is about beauty, art, and something more than ourselves, and how many times, from those same people, have I heard that science is about cold equations, heartless numbers, and the emotionless accumulation of facts?
Don’t anyone dare tell me about the emptiness of rational thought, the prosaic nature of science. It’s science that revealed the beauty of the Cone Nebula, and science that opened our minds to the beauty of understanding it.
And long after every human currently on this planet has shuffled off their mortal coil, and a thousand thousand religions have come and gone, the Cone will still be thoughtlessly, coldly, and unemotionally creating stars for millennia to come.
* I wonder what type of ads will be displayed for this blog entry. Religious stuff? More astronomy images? Left handed pipe cleaners? Keep track in the comments! Collect ‘em all!
I’m a bit concerned because it looks to me like the top of the head is exploding! Not to mention the distorted left shoulder. I wouldn’t have been able to make it into anything, let alone a person, if it didn’t have that bad Photoshop pic over the top.
Astronomy, Science & God
Was the Universe Created? Or Do Facts Tell a Different Story?
This also happens when you look through a microscope instead of a telescope
The Bad Astronomer has some things to say about a beautiful nebula. And then he finds a few religious wackos demeaning it with a truly gak-worthy animated gif. How many times have I heard that religion is about beauty, art, and something more than …
Jesus’ head probably IS exploding after seeing that ad. Gaaakk!
Hey, just think of the possibilities Photoshop brings to the practice of “seeing religious icons in random stuff”! We can start seeing Jesus in brick walls, pages of text, spills on the kitchen floor…
Oh, wait, the whackos already do see Jesus in that stuff. Or Mary. Or Elvis, I think.
Astronomy for Australians
Astronomy Online guides & products Telescopes, Forums, Binoculars Etc
Aussie Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing Business New Internet Marketing Seminar
The first one’s OK. I noticed before that google is doing IP based ads now.
as for the picture, when it was mentioned, I thought that maybe they saw the jesus face in profile on the right hand side of the nebula, but nope, a straight dumb photoshop job., looking straight back at ya.
these people lack imagination. obviously.
Looking at the Cone Nebula — not the abomination Photoshop version — I could imagine a profile facing to the right of a bearded, long-haired person with thier brains bursting out. Could that be Jesus? Well, I don’t remember any scripture with Jesus’ brains bursting out, but I haven’t actually read the whole Bible…
funniest thing is that’s not even what jesus looked like.
http://www.rejesus.co.uk/expressions/faces_jesus/gallery/catacombs.html
http://www.rejesus.co.uk/expressions/faces_jesus/gallery/black.html
I, too, believe that the universe is amazing enough without making up weird stuff about it.
When I first saw the image of the Cone Nebula several days ago, I marvelled at its beauty, yet noted how deadly such a sight would be to us humans if we got too close to it. I also wondered about what we couldn’t see, what secrets lie hidden within the dark shroud. (I immediately saved the image to my computer, by the way.)
Never, EVER would I have seen any human shape, especially a face (let alone the face of Jesus), in that image. I know we humans have a natural tendency to assign order to chaotic imagery; this tendency is reinforced and strengthened throughout our lives. Even though I tend to accept things as they are, I also occasionally notice shapes in images; it’s my nature as a human. But I don’t ascribe any significance to such occurrences.
That forced image of Jesus in the Cone Nebula was so contrived, and so simply wrong. It’s disturbing enough, a reminder of the rabid fundamentalism that’s prevalent in American society these days, which is actually distorting the good aspects of Christianity (and religion as a whole).
But I just had an even more disturbing thought: what if some people would see the image of Jesus in an atomic mushroom cloud? I’m not very religious, but if I were, I’d pray that the madness stops before it gets that far.
Hmm.. this is easy!
comment added by The Bad Astronomer: I don’t think this code will allow hotlinking of images in the comments, but I see you have it linked in your comment below, so we’ll just leave it as a broken image link.
Dang it! Stupid code! I hope it can be fixed. Sorry for the above, everyone!
Guess it wasn’t all that easy after all! (Just kidding.)
Heh, I feel for you on this one Phil.
Next thing you know is GLP will be advertising here through google.
That will be about the time someone posts a link showing how Santa Clause’s face is visible in the orion nebula…
Anyways, there isn’t any physical description of a “Jesus” (Greek for Joshua or Jehu (a few who were actual historical Hebrew Rabbis circa 550 B.C.E. till 130 C.E.). Actually, there aren’t any physical descriptions of most of the significant persons of the Holy Bible–no drawings, sculptures, or skeletons or mummiforms to create “likenesses” of. The mediieval artisans created idealized religious icons and art.
Therefore, no one can possibly “know” what the: “Jesus” or “Mary” or even “Satan” looks like.
Isn’t imagination and make-believe grand! But it’s not science.
Maybe we could make some money off of this… “Phun with Photoshop. We’ll take an astronomical image–moons, planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, you name it–and superimpose another image over the top of it. Need a religious icon to further your cause? Need “evidence” to “prove” celestial or divine influence in the skies above? Want to immortalize a deceased pet or loved one in a unique way? We can do it! No job is too small, no fee is too large. Phun with Photoshop. Call NOW!!”
Then again, I have more scruples than that.
I suspect that if you surveyed the opinions of all the faculty of the top 25 theological schools in the US, all of the respondants would say that the photoshoped image (and the crazyness that inspires it) is total crap. This has nothing to do with religion at all.
To say that THIS represents religious thinking, is no different than saying that Erich Von Daniken represents scientific thinking.
Is that better?
http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=thisiseasy4gg.jpg
OK, now I’m just getting mad. It didn’t even TRY to post this image. If this doesn’t work, you’ll just have to type in the dang URL yourself… I’m sure the effect is now ruined, of course…
CJSF
HeyZeus has a mullet? Now I’m even happier that I’m an atheist… (that’s “athiest” for any of you illiterate fundies reading this.)
What is that mote in God’s eye?
Holy Vagina of the Sacred Underpass! It looks like someone threw a lemon meringue pie at Jesus, and it landed on his head!
BA, I quoted this BLOG at another site with links to the pictures. I credit you as the writer. Is that ok?
This makes me think of something Feynman said:
[quote]Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globes of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on the carousel, my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light…For far more marvelous is the truth that any artists of the past imagine!
Why do poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia, man must be silent?[/quote]
Definitive proof: God is a Mac user. Here’s what I see when I look at that image of the cone nebula: http://www.zero-g.co.uk/media/images/MAC_LOGO.jpg
O Joy Unconfined! O Delicious Liquor of Intoxicating Knowledge! Two of my favorite site are trackbackingbacktoback …BadAstronomy and Pharyngula!
And as to the topic at hand, I can only refer you to previous research:
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/religion/10616
Now that’s just… They see Jesus in the Eagle, now in the CONE? Hey, leave the poor guy alone. In the Eagle Nebula, the “Jesus” face could’ve been my classmate.
I’m the kind of person that actually likes to IMAGINE things. Afterall, my basic function is “artist”, which is to imagine. But that’s just plain retarded. How can you see Jesus’s face in THAT? Other than when you cheaply paste a face like that? (A 4 years old could do a better job. If they did that on Photoshop, they might like to learn how to use the thing. )
When they enhance the brightness to show us the “basic” of the face (before they awfully paste the said “Jesus” face), my imagination didn’t connect to Jesus. In fact, it didn’t connect to anything. I always imagined that it was someone from back, with some cloth on the head, watching some bright star above.
But I’m not going to sell it saying it’s one of the three kings that found the track to baby Jesus thanks to a bright star, thus the guy from back with a towel on his head and the bright star, blah blah…
If it is Jesus in the Cone Nebula, does that mean we can use HUbble to see what’s up his nose?
The bright potion of the nebula does look somewhat like a face to me. The face of a walrus-wearing square rimed glasses. Maybe we could call it the Wally Walrus nebula.
This reminds me of a time I was in a Creatuve Thinking class. The instructor has some odd blobby black and white image taped to the white board. We were supposed to tell them what kind of image we saw. No one spoke for several minutes while we all pondered. Finally I said it kind of looked like a pig. Once the instructor told us we were “supposed” to see Jesus in the image, I could see that, but it still looked like a pig to me.
Guess I’m not much for religious revelations.
jbs
Jeffery L. Whitledge said:
I suspect that if you surveyed the opinions of all the faculty of the top 25 theological schools in the US, all of the respondants would say that the photoshoped image (and the crazyness that inspires it) is total crap.
Fair enough, and it’s worth pointing out, but I also doubt that the opinions of the faculty of the top 25 theological schools has much to do with the religious attitudes of average people. Trained and educated theologians are, by and large, not the cause for concern. It would make no sense to determine a scientific result by polling people about it, but religion in practice does consist of what people believe.
That isn’t a religious site, it’s a site selling pictures to the gullible.
As for the ads here, I have no idea what they are. I use Firefox, with the Adblock extension, and wouldn’t even know there were any ads at all if you hadn’t mentioned them. Adblock is simply excellent.
I have to admit, the image Christopher Ferro ultimately linked to is slightly better than the one BA posted in this blog, but “slightly better” is a relative term. It’s still very contrived. (By the way, I laughed aloud at Michelle Rochon’s comment about learning to use Photoshop.)
Now I wonder, which “Jesus Cone” is the One True Jesus Cone?
Those fading images are scary… They remind me of those surprise flash animations
Yes, it is amazing how easy it is to “see” something, and then you stick an image on it, and … VOILA! I wonder if my contrived image will end up somewhere as “proof” or something. Now THAT would be amusing!
CJSF
First: wow, what a fantastic picture. Second - I couldn’t see any face in the original image, even after viewing the scary animated GIF. Third, I prefer Christopher Ferro’s version anyway - the sheep is a nice touch! (Obscure quote: “Let’s call him … Shaun.”)
Ironically, if it were possible to view the Cone Nebula from close up (say, less than 5 parsecs), you probably wouldn’t see it at all (not with the human eye). I’d guess the image we see is the result of a CCD collecting light for minutes or hours continuously. Does anyone happen to know how long Hubble was collecting photons for this one?
Try here.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2002/11/fastfacts/
Actually, there is a historical iconographic representation of the face of Jesus. Its a second century golden roman coin which, in all honesty looks nothing at all like modern representations. It has short blonde hair, no beard, and looks like a stereotypical roman icon.
The ‘modern jesus image’ has been pretty much traced back to the 15th century, when the shroud of turin first became known to the world at large. However, current archaeological evidence shows that the shroud (which has no conclusive record prior to the italian renaissance) was created by an italian artist of the period known as Leonardo Da Vinci (this has nothing to do with ‘the da vinci code. I’ve never even read that book.). Modern scientists experimenting with linen cloths and photochemicals which were available (for other purposes) in those days, created a similar ‘burned’ image on a cloth that is very consistent with the face on the shroud. Essentially, by the best we can tell, is that the shroud is the first photograph ever taken. The face matches decriptions and portraits of Leonardo. If it was created by him, it is likely a self portrait.
In other words, the modern iconographic representation of Jesus may very well be a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Nothing conclusive (or even directly related), just food for thought. Thought you guys might find it interesting.
Arrg! Nigel, I recognize that “obscure quote” of yours, but I can’t recall where I’d first encountered it. Thanks for driving me nuts! (It’s a pretty short drive, actually.
)
Thanks for that Hubble link, Irishman!
I’d like to point out that Scientific Positivism is a set of beliefs and should not be mistaken with science. Or atheism. Hume was an atheist, but he was in favor of reason as the beacon for truth, for just an example. On the other hand, good measure of great scientists were religious, and I could just name a few related to astronomy, like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. So let’s stay clear from “association attacks”. If a religious individual did A, it doesn’t mean all religious people do that, or that religion leads to that. Lots of atheists can believe in crazy things too. I know a couple who deny the Big Bang theory for they feel it would inevitably lead to The First Cause, what would make they very uncomfortable. Cognitive distortion is something of the nature of man, regardless of their particular beliefs. Not to mention that, on the words of Max Horkheimer, “Many times in the history of Western civilization have the Catholic Church and its great teachers helped science to emancipate itself from superstition and charlatanism.”
Re: Images of Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t appear on any second-century Roman coins (as the Empire was pagan and Christianity an officially disapproved religion). Jesus first appears on Byzantine gold coins of the sixth century.
It is correct that earlier depictions of Jesus show him as a clean-shaven, curly-haired youth. The bearded Jesus isn’t as late as the Renaissance, however; there is a good example from the fifth-century apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome.
I recommend the book Clash of Gods by Thomas Mathews that discusses representations of Jesus. His conclusion that the bearded Christ is modeled after pagan depictions of Jupiter/Zeus is, I think, mostly correct.
Scott de B.
I don’t understand what you said:
“Jesus first appears on Byzantine gold coins of the sixth century,” and “there is a good example from the fifth-century apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana”.
Does that mean his likeness did not appear on coins until the C6th, or was the mosaic laid later than the date of the building (i.e. was the building C5th but the mosaic maybe C7th or something)?
Anyway, it looks like his likelness was not recorded until at least 400 years after he died. So, obviously, that’s no problem to anyone wanting to depict him in art …
Thanks, Irishman, for the link. It was a 3.4 hour exposure.
CR, I’ll put you out of your misery - it comes from the short film “Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave” by Aardman Animations (directed by Nick Park, I believe). The sheep has just emerged from the fiendish machinery minus his fleece, and Wallace decides to name him Shaun (shorn). Believe me, it works in the film, folks!
Delance, is Scientific Positivism akin to Logical Positivism? And isn’t that the one where you start from the premise that you know nothing, and can only know something to be so if you have seen direct evidence (or maybe I just got confused)?
Nigel, yes, it’s the philosophical view that things are meaningful only insofar as they are verifiable. As popular as it is might be with segments of society, it is philosophy and not science, and while it uses the scientific method as a primary method for truth-finding, both are not to be confused, i.e., being and adept of logical positivism is not a requirement to accept the body of knowledge produced by science. Interestingly enough, the statements of logical positivism are not verifiable and are therefore meaningless by their own terms.
Scott, this information is not accurate. For example, take this 6th Century Icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PantocratorSinai.jpeg
Unless one is differentiating between icons and images, this would put the date earlier than the renaissance. It was assumed that Jesus had a beard due to the fact He was a practicing Jew.
Wallace & Gromit… of course! (I have it on DVD, for crying out loud!) Thanks, Nigel, and sorry everyone else, for going off-topic here.
I have always wondered why The Almighty chooses to manifest His Power in the modern world by making a statue cry or an image on a piece of toast. I mean, if you’re going to violate the laws of physics, why not do some good: weaken the virus before it infected Mozart; deflect the sperm that fertilized Hitler’s egg. Thus He could still act small scale — and do some good .
At least, this manifestation is *big*: 70 trillion kilometers, and light coming to us from 500 years before He was incarnated! Truly wondrous, though I suppose it is all just made just to *look* that old to confuse us.
Nigel, Scott was saying that the first coin depiction was 6th century Byzantine, vs. the earlier mosaic showing a bearded Jesus.
Zamboni, I have not heard of this connection to Leonardo da Vinci before. What is your evidence for that? I am aware that the shroud has no provenance before the 14th century, a time that was rife with fake religious icons. I am aware that the Catholic Church investigated it at the time and concluded it was a forgery, and even identified the artist and obtained his statement of authorship. I don’t recall it being Leonardo da Vinci, and I’m sure that would have stood out if I’d heard it.
Irishman, thanks, that’s cleared that one up.
One or two other odds and ends…
The Roman Empire was pagan up until some time in the third century, I believe. Certainly, emperors of the fourth century were Christian, and it seems that the earliest churches date from around that time. St. Patrick, who took Christianity to Ireland, was probably a Romano-British official (calling himself Patricus) fleeing from the collapse of Roman law in England (4th century). Christian symbolism is rife with pagan imagery (e.g. the holly and ivy for the midwinter festival, the hare which was the emblem of the goddess Eastre) so it is not too surprising to learn that the most popular image of Jesus derives from pre-existing images of Zues / Jupiter.
Just in case you were interested.
This is probably a misguided reflex of man’s hard-wired need to search for the Creator.
Nigel, everyone used beards back then, not just greek mythological deities. The fact that practicing jews and rabis used beards at the 1st century likely palyed a key factor.
As for the Shroud, the Catholic Church has never made an official statement as about its legitimacy.
[…] w atheists can promote a culture of reason without playing the religious victimhood game. Bad to the Cone Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy Blog recounts […]
Hi Phil,
I like to visit NASA’s Astronomy picture of the day (as I imagine many other of your visitors do) and I think I have the perfect foil for all the “Jesus is in the nebula” crowd. If you go to http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000501.html, the image of NGC7000 looks remarkably like a profile of the Devil looking towards bottom right and grinning satanically. Why would a benevolent creator put an image of his arch-enemy in the sky?
Actually, that’s called the North America Nebula, for obvious reasons. It’s a remarkable resemblance. The Witch Head nebula is maybe a little more pagan and blasphemous: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010227.html
(ironically, turn it sideways and it looks like a running ghost).