Loving my selfies with the James Webb Space Telescope, says Ganesha

One of the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA)

Hello friends,

This is Ganesha. I understand you built a $10 billion telescope just so you could see me in higher resolution than the Hubble Telescope. The way people are humiliating that poor fellow in memes by comparing his resolution to mine, he might as well be called the Humble Telescope. I am just amazed no one has called my resolution the CTC and his resolution the take-home salary. These are, after all, inflationary times. So this was a wonderful time to spend $10 billion on a giant telescope.

I understand you are seeking answers from the outside world that you can’t seem to find on this planet. Like why your crypto investments go down just when you have bought the dip. Perhaps you should look at the great dipper in the sky and ask yourself that question. Perhaps the answers you seek from me are to be found within yourself. Like why you would take financial advice from a 19-year-old TikTok influencer whose bio says “Crypto bro for life”? But enough about investments.

The James Webb telescope is humbling for me as well. So far, I was able to hide behind the cosmic clouds and the Milky Way Galaxy acting as if I am some omniscient being. You will find many omniscient beings on financial Twitter as well. But the James Webb Telescope has shown you that I am not to be worshipped alone, but to be explored and understood. So I hope you can understand that building a physical statue of Warren Buffet for all CFAs to admire during convocation will not achieve anything. Except for a rise in the shares of statue making companies.

Clown-faced Nebula, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image: NASA via Unsplash)

Now I understand you are using the telescope to look back in time to understand how it all began. How did we all come into being 13.7 billion years ago? Like imagine tracking a stock for 13.7 billion years. It would take several galaxies just to fit the bar graph. The quarterly reports would span several millennia. You would need another telescope just to study the balance sheet. And don’t even get me started on the cashflow statement.

Many of you also want to use the telescope to see the Big Bang as it first happened. Or as market analysts would call it 1992, 2001, 2008, 2011 and 2023 (says Ganesha). But it is wonderful to see all of humanity united in its passion to observe the beautiful images being shared from this even more beautiful telescope. It’s appearance, like a futuristic robot, reminded me of the V-SAT terminal that was used for satellite-based electronic trading when it came to India for the first time in 1994. It was eventually going to replace the open cry system. And now in turn is being replaced by financial cry babies on Twitter and Instagram.

Some of us as children had those wonderful ceiling stickers where if you switched off the light, the stars and planets would glow. In some ways, the James Webb telescope has brought you that ceiling to life. When earlier it used to be just my ceiling. So I suppose in some ways it does make you feel closer to God. But enough about Warren Buffet.

Many of you invested in the stock of SpaceX as a proxy to where space technology will go in the financial future. And now your pacemaker is programmed to kick into action every time Elon Musk tweets something. I think he is not trying to get close to God as much as he has gotten close to playing God. I think it would be quite hilarious if the James Webb telescope captures a distant planet Elonus, whose entire civilization is based on the sharing of Elon Musk memes.

They say the James Webb telescope can show us dying stars and dying galaxies. So I may sign off by suggesting you take a good look at the dying stars and dying galaxies in your own portfolio. Or one day Elon Musk will blow away $10 billion of Bitcoin’s market cap, just to see his meme trending on Elonus.

Also read: Starry, starry night