How The Hubble Telescope Changed How Scientists Shared Information

Scientists used to be pretty data-stingy... But that all changed with one photograph. It's always referred to as the 'Deep Fields' photograph. When they literally pointed the worlds best camera at a black and empty portion of the sky and let it record for a little over a week. What came back was thousands of very distant galaxies that we can't see even with the humongous telescopes here on Earth. And when they picked a different point in the sky to try the same thing with, it came back with similar results. It literally changed the way science and information is shared. Here's why.

Forever, scientists have guarded their discoveries as treasures, because like any property, it can be stolen. We call it 'intellectual property theft' today, so you know what's up with that. So scientists would sit on relevant information for long periods of time, and in turn, discoveries and information flowed at a snails pace. Honestly, if we had the free and open internet since the early 1900's to share information with, we might be traveling at warp speed by now, but this entire new sharing information phenomenon has only evolved in the world of science since the mid 90's when this mass of 'Deep Fields' information was released free to anyone that wanted it.