Imaging deep time

Until the 1960s many scientists thought of cosmology as a branch of philosophy. This changed after the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation. Today cosmology is accepted as a science, and our understanding of the Universe advances through both theory and observation. Giant terrestrial and space-based telescopes and banks of powerful computers enable astronomers to capture and analyse the faint light of the most distant galaxies and the rarest particles. The artworks in this room, often created in collaboration with scientists, offer us a direct encounter with observations of the light from deep space and deep time.

Our current collective idea of outer space has been heavily influenced by the astonishing imagery of the Hubble Space Telescope. Grace Weir brings a photograph taken by the Hubble Deep Field team to life. Her immersive animated film brings us face to face with the ancient light only a stone's throw from the Big Bang. Artists Semiconductor use light to explore patterns in the debris created by particle collisions in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe’s Centre for Nuclear Research. Katie Paterson worked with astronomical data to capture the colour of the Universe based on starlight at every stage of its existence. Melanie King deconstructs an iconic Hubble photograph to question where the truth lies between the original pixel data and the final processed image.

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