Good news is best when it is unexpected. Think about it. When the good news you know is coming finally arrives, your response is usually something like: “That’s great. I’m so happy for you. Isn’t that wonderful.” When it comes out of the blue, however, you just can’t hold back from blurting out: “That’s incredible! Are you kidding me! Just unbelievable!” And, rightfully so, the exclamation points always seem to attach themselves automatically to the exclamations.
I’ve been looking around a lot lately for good news. There’s just so much of the other stuff. Of course, I now realize that was a mistake. It’s just too contrived, and when it’s contrived, disappointment is sure to follow. Thankfully, and totally by accident, good news suddenly appeared recently via news about a region of space called the Orion Molecular Cloud-2. I mean, I never imagined that the OMC-2 could bring out the smiles. But, it did. At least for me. Here’s why.
Though we’re months away from Orion and its magnificent nebula owning the southern sky, the Webb Telescope recently released an image taken by its near infrared camera, the NIRCam, that captures a part — the OMC-2 — of the Orion A Molecular Cloud. Another part, the well-known Orion Nebula is but a small — one-tenth the size — subset of the full cloud. Luckily though, and with the help of a pair of binoculars, we can see it because energetic young stars within that area have effectively blown away, or diffused, enough of the surrounding gases to make it glowingly visible to us.
Molecular clouds as a whole, on the other hand, are too dense and cold for us to see into. They trap light. Without special equipment we wind up looking at apparent emptiness. But we now know that these immense structures are the exact opposite of emptiness because Webb has pierced through the darkness and has let us see just how active they are. OMC-2 is a bit behind and above the Orion Nebula and is located some 1280 light years from Earth. Webb’s unprecedented view of it leaves us with mouths agape — a display of creation that should entice each of us to try to consider our role and our place in such majesty.
Intense gravity and unimaginable cold temperatures in OMC-2 drive atoms to combine into molecules, gain mass and eventually become protostars that eject powerful energy jets from their poles as they acquire the fuel necessary to burst into newborn stars. These processes interact constantly within OMC-2. It is not a place one would want to casually visit. Everything seems to be a target of something else. However, the chaos exhibited there is not really random. This is how the universe has unfolded. This is how it is supposed to be. This is how the building blocks of life begin. It’s not chaotic at all. It’s our origin story.
All of this formed my unexpected good news. Sometimes, we just have to widen our view. Sometimes, we have to think beyond ourselves. Sometimes, good news is realizing that far off — whether in space or somewhere beyond our immediate grasp — conditions exist that allow us to add many layers of perspective to everything we hold dear. Once we do that, some of life’s harshness can become more manageable, even if only temporarily.
The real gift, I’ve come to understand, is that such unexpected good news can actually be transformative and go well past temporary relief. There may be plenty of material right now to doom-scroll, but reading about the OMC-2, the Webb’s extraordinary technology and then reflecting upon the absolute perfection — utterly violent though it may be — of star birth gives me hope that we clearly still have the means and the ability to overcome all of that other stuff that so horribly detracts from all that is possible. Yeah, good news — brought to us from deep space and through the genius of many right here on Earth — is out there, unexpected, much needed and very timely.