The Webb Telescope Is Just Getting Started
The first scientific results are coming in, and the $10 billion instrument is working even better than astronomers had dared to hope.
For three days in December, some 200 astronomers filled an auditorium at the institute to hear and discuss the first results from the telescope. An additional 300 or so watched online, according to the organizers. The event served as a belated celebration of the Webb’s successful launch and inauguration and a preview of its bright future.
One by one, astronomers marched to the podium and, speaking rapidly to obey the 12-minute limit, blitzed through a cosmos of discoveries. Galaxies that, even in their relative youth, had already spawned supermassive black holes. Atmospheric studies of some of the seven rocky exoplanets orbiting Trappist 1, a red dwarf star that might harbor habitable planets. (Data suggest that at least two of the exoplanets lack the bulky primordial hydrogen atmospheres that would choke off life as we know it, but they may have skimpy atmospheres of denser molecules like water or carbon dioxide.)
“We’re in business,” declared Bjorn Benneke of the University of Montreal, as he presented data of one of the exoplanets.
Megan Reiter of Rice University took her colleagues on a “deep dive” through the Cosmic Cliffs, a cloudy hotbed of star formation in the Carina constellation, which was a favorite early piece of sky candy. She is tracing how jets from new stars, shock waves and ionizing radiation from more massive nearby stars that were born boiling hot are constantly reshaping the cosmic geography and triggering the formation of new stars.
“This could be a template for what our own sun went through when it was formed,” Dr. Reiter said in an interview.
READ THE COMMENTS AS WELL: לייענען די באַמערקונגען אויך
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/science/astronomy-webb-telescope.html
It is amazing what we don’t know keeps becoming more understood through science rather than living in a mystic stupor of the past. I put the bottle back in the liquor cabinet. Feels good.
ReplyDeleteThere is an episode in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where a character is imprisoned and set to a torture room. In the room he is shows the entire cosmos, all of it down to the farthest star. Then he's show a miniscule pinpoint of light and told "And that's you". The idea is to impress on the victim how insignificant and meaningless he is in the grad scheme of things. He's nothing!
ReplyDelete(Fortunately for this character, he's so egotistical that he concludes that he's the centre of this amazing universe created all for him and walks out of the room in a great mood)
Any wonder why the chassidim don't want their kids reading? They'd rather talk about the wonders and miracles of the Besht on his wagon in the forest and at the local inn.
ReplyDeletehttps://aeon.co/essays/the-first-americans-a-story-of-wonderful-uncertain-science?utm_source=pocket-newtab
.....And Paysach Krohn would be out of business!
ReplyDeleteBut it backfires. All this was created by God. All these endless wonders, a great demonstration of His infinite power. Ma rabu ma'aesacha!
ReplyDeleteItrasant that the telescope is named Webb. The Web is the great educator and equalizer. Check out new Diaglogue #9 magazine.
ReplyDelete