Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy blog explains further:

They pointed Hubble at a fairly empty region of space, one where very few stars are seen. Then they unleashed the new Wide Field Camera 3 (called WFC3 for short) on it, taking images in infrared wavelengths just outside what the human eye can see… and they let it stare at that spot for a solid 48 hours.

The result? This picture, showing galaxies flippin' everywhere, some seen a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang itself. Because the Universe is expanding, distant galaxies appear to recede from us, and their light gets stretched out. This Doppler Effect - the same thing that makes the sound of a car engine drop in pitch when it passes you at high speed - changes the colors we see from these far-flung galaxies, so their ultraviolet light, for example, gets stretched into visible and even infrared wavelengths. What you are seeing here is actually more energetic light emitted by galaxies that's lost energy traveling across the expanding Universe, so by the time it gets here it's infrared.

So the colors are not "real" in this image; they've been translated into red, green, and blue so we can see them. The reddest objects in the image are most likely the farthest away, and may be as much as 13 billion light years away.

Thirteen billion. With a B.

Plait's deconstruction of this epic photo is worth reading in its entirety... once you're done staring and contemplating the vastness of a cosmos that barely notices the eyeblink of our existence. [Hubblesite via Bad Astronomy Blog]

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait moderated a panel exploring the relationship between science and science fiction. On hand to offer their opinions were Caprica executive producer and writer Jane Espenson, Eureka creator Jamie Paglia, Eureka and Virtuality science consultant Kevin Grazier, as well as Fringe screenwriters Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman, and neuroscientist Ricardo Gil da Costa. The panel was put on by the Science and Entertainment Exchange and Discover magazine.

Jane Espenson talked about Caprica's concept of soul transference and the idea of downloading yourself into another carrier after death. Espenson says:

the question we're all arguing about in the writer's room right now is, "is this the afterlife or is this something else?"

In regards to science fiction in the series becoming science reality, she jokingly tells us,

I think we all need to start worrying about being downloaded and put into a robot."

While it may be a while before we can download entire personalities, brain scanning technology has already presented us with a startling amount of information. Scientist and Fringe consultant da Costa cautions us that synaptic mapping is very much a reality, and without ethical parameters. He says

It's such a new technology that there is no real legislation around it.

Could this lead to frightening new "enhanced interrogation" techniques? *shudder*

All panelist agreed that science and science fiction naturally form a symbiotic relationship, where scientists and artists inspire each other to ever greater heights. Grazier admits:

My desk at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) is filled with action figures. Science fiction is why I became a scientist.

Paglia and Whitman discussed the negative effects that super-powered science could have on a society — or a small town like Eureka. Paglia explains:

I'd love to be able to teleport. I hate to commute. But if you have a reality in which teleportation is possible, other things break down. The flight industry goes out of business, taxi companies, buses...and the portion of the economy collapses.

On the other hand, the carbon footprint is reduced and new transporter technologies would undoubtedly rise in their place. And we'd undeniably encounter the same transportation mishaps. After all, reminds Plait, "transporter accidents are inevitable."

Grazier said that in "Water," there were "fundamental physics I brainfarted on." In that episode, a breach in Galactica caused water to blast out side of the ship. If he'd been scientifically accurate, that water would have pushed Galactica the other way, but he says, "I missed the physics and we had more drama. I'm sorry I was wrong it won't happen again."

But there was a scientific triumph for Grazier too. In season three, in the episode "Day in the Life," where Callie and Tyrol are blasted out of the airlock, through vacuum, and into a waiting Raptor. While a lot of fans complained that BSG's depiction of the event was incorrect, Grazier said in fact many scifi fans' minds had been poisoned by watching Outland and other crappy science in movies. "They wouldn't have exploded or been frozen," he said. "Yes, they would have frozen eventually, but not in the few seconds they were in vacuum." He also noted that they did show Tyrol getting the bends, which was realistic, and Callie had to be in a hyperbaric chamber. "I was proud that we got that right," he added. And fixed a lot of people's misconceptions about vacuum in the process.

One more little tidbit from Grazier had to do with cylon downloading. An audience member asked if there were any rules for cylon downloading. Grazier said there are a few, and that he doesn't see the downloading process as a cylon's entire personality being broadcast at death. "I see it as a live update every day," he explained. So the cylons are downloading daily, and when they die they can use what they've already got backed up. But another panelist issued a warning: "I've been trying to BitTorrent Tricia Helfer and it didn't work."