January 9, 2020 • 43 mins
Daniel and Jorge discuss the James Webb Space Telescope
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, how do you feel about sequels? Well, in general,
they tend to be sort of bigger, more expensive, and
early on schedule. I think bigger and more expensive is
the whole point of sequels. Well, can you imagine what
you liked? My favorite sequel is called the PhD Movie Too,
totally unbiased opinion, totally unbiased. I wrote and produced it,
(00:29):
but I think it was good. Yeah. Well when I
when we made it, I took inspiration from like, you know,
The Empire Strikes Back and you know The Matrix Too.
I think those are all movies that did pretty well
on the sequels. Oh, I see you meant movie sequels. Yes,
what kind of sequels did you think I was talking about? Hey,
it's the podcast, So I was thinking science experiment sequels
(00:53):
of course, Indiana Jones and the Thesis of Dude, Rise
of the Protons. Hi. I'm or Having, a cartoonist and
(01:17):
the creator of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
particle physicist, and I actually am a fan of movie sequels.
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of My Heart Radio. I think this is
our episode number a hundred or so I think we're
like twenty, so I don't even know if it counts
as a sequel anymore. What would that be called. I
(01:37):
think it's called episode A hundred and twenty, and it's
got to be a Latin name for it or something
like de sentiqual. Well, I think we probably are going
to peek out around two hundreds, So if people can
just hang on and wait for that one, maybe we'll
come out before Avengers. We are slowly building the dramatic tension,
(01:59):
So welcome to five guys. It's about the universe and
all the amazing and beautiful and mind blowing things to
see out there in the far reaches of the cosmos.
It's about all the things that you want to understand,
all the things that you want to see about the universe,
all the things that you'd like us to explain to you.
So that's our job here today is to take you
(02:20):
on a tour of the cosmos, help you visualize and
help you really understand the universe that we find ourselves in. Yeah,
and sometimes we don't just talk about the things that
are out there or that might be out there in
the universe, but we also kind of like to talk
about how we see these things out there and how
we know that they're there, and how can we know
(02:40):
more about them? That's right. One important role of science
is to develop new eyes into the universe, new ways
to look out there and discover crazy, mind blowing stuff
that informs our understanding of how everything works. And so
we talk sometimes about how particle accelerators give us a
new vision of the very small, or if we look
at a strophysical new trinos, we can see the universe
(03:02):
in a different way. And so every time we build
a new telescope or a new device or new something,
it's like we're opening a new kind of eyeball. Yeah,
because there is a lot out there for us to
see and discover, and it's pretty amazing that we can
see a lot of it from our little you know,
spherical rock here floating in the middle space, in a
(03:22):
corner of the galaxy, in the in the little corridor
of the universe, and almost spherical rock, remember our podcast,
that's right, almost spherical Yeah. But it is incredible that
we can learn anything, you know, that without going anywhere,
we can learn so much about this vast cosmos just
by sitting on our little home and that relies on
us gathering all this information. And if you think about
(03:43):
it from the other perspective, there's so much information about
the universe just washing over us right now. You know,
we know about light, and we know about neutrinos and
all sorts of other particles. But we think that there
are other kinds of matter washing over us that are
still in this sable, and there might be yet new
forms of matter we haven't yet even imagined that contained
(04:05):
incredible revelations about the universe. We haven't even figured out
how to listen to that information yet, how to open
up an eyeball that will let us see the universe
in that way. Oh, man, Daniel, you just gave me
galactic fomo like cosmic fear of missing out. What if
there's something, you know, revelatory about the reality of the
universe right now going through us, coming from space in
(04:28):
the in the light flashing over is but nobody's looking
What if almost certainly right, think about the history of science.
You know, for millions and millions of years, light that
contained information about the universe was hitting the Earth and
there was nobody even looking up. And then for thousands
of years we looked up, but we had no idea
what that information contained. It's only the last few decades
(04:49):
we're starting to get a clue for how much information
there is. So I'm sure we've only begun to crack
that nut. Man, what if we started looking out and
we missed the first part the US movie and we
just catch the sequel. I mean, how confusing would that be.
We are looking at the universe sort of almost fourteen
billion years after the story started, but fortunately the movie
(05:11):
started also very far away, and so it's just getting
here now. We can go back and watch the original prequels. Oh,
I see, this is not like an episode fourteen billion
in the movie of the Universe. No, episode fourteen billion
is happening right here on Earth right now. But we
hope that episode zero is still out there and that
(05:31):
if we get in powerful enough telescope, we can see
as it arrives on Earth because it took so long
to get here. All right, So today we'll be talking
about one such tool to look out into the universe.
And it's a pretty exciting too. It's still under construction,
but it's uh planned to be launched pretty soon, right
in the next couple of years. Yeah, they actually finished
(05:53):
building it a couple of years ago, but they're still
sort of tweaking it and preparing it. It's a really
complex device and then to really get it ready for launch.
It's going to be a delicate thing when it finally
goes up into space, and it's sort of the child
or the successor to something that everybody is familiar with,
one of the most famous experiments in astronomy. So today
on the podcast, we will be asking the question what
(06:20):
will the James Web space telescope tell us about the universe?
And you might be familiar with space telescopes in general
because of Hubble. Hubble, of course named after Edwin Hubble,
who discovered that the universe was expanding, is provided these
gorgeous pictures of the Cosmos had looked further and further
out into the universe and anything before it. It's an
(06:41):
incredible technological marvel. And now we're talking about basically Hubble
two point oh, how about the next generation or if
this was like horror movies, would be like son of Hubble,
that hub will have a son. He might object to that.
You know, well, Hubble's son was probably named Hubble actually
just lives, so that would be Terrible Hubble, son of
(07:02):
Hubble Hubble episode two. Yeah. The real name for it, though,
is the James Webb Space Telescope, named after an administrator
of NASA who had a big role in the Apollo program.
And I hope that James Webb becomes as famous as Hubble,
and hope that James Webb Space Telescope teaches us as
much about the universe as the Hubble did. Yeah. So, actually,
(07:24):
one of the reasons I brought up the PhD movie
too in the opening of the episode is that that
those were two movies, PhD Movie One and Tune, which
that started real graduate students and real scientists and postdocs
in the movie. And so it just so happened that
one of the stars of the movies is now a
scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope project. Her name
(07:46):
is Alexander Lockwood, and she's awesome. She has a PhD
in astronomy from cal Tech and she works on it
right now. And so I went on and I asked
her what she thought is exciting and knew about this
new telescope. Yeah, so I called her out since we
were I knew we were talking about this space Telescope,
and I asked her to tell us a little bit
about what this space telescope is and how it's different
(08:10):
than the Hubble Telescope. So here's what you had to say.
The James Web Space Telescope is NASA's next huge mission.
It is going to tell us new things about all
aspects of the universe, from planets to galaxies to the
very beginning of what we know in the universe. It
still works like Hubble does, like a giant telescope in space,
(08:31):
but it's seven times bigger, and it's going to see
back even further and even deeper into all sorts of things.
So it's it's basically Hubble on steroids. It's not replacing Hubble,
because Hubble's still up there and working. But they're gonna
work side by side and tell us things you know
that we can't even imagine. All Right, it's an ambitious sequel.
The thing is what he's saying. You know it's been
(08:53):
working out, you know it's ripped. They didn't just try
to do the same thing as if first one. They're
really trying to upgrade it and let us see further
into the universe and try to answer some of the
new and bigger questions we have in astronomy, right, Yeah,
And you don't get to build one of these things
very often, and so when you do, you have to
(09:14):
balance being really ambitious about developing new technologies that are
going to give you incredible new information about the universe
with actually making the thing work. And so they always
want to push the boundaries a little bit. But then
again you also actually want to get the thing funded
and up into space. And so here they've tried to
go way beyond what they did with Hubble. They try
(09:36):
to do something much more impressive and much more powerful
because Hubble still working, right, You don't just want another Hubble,
You want something better than Hubble. You don't want a
double Hubble. I take ten Hubbles. But you know, if
you're gonna launch something, you want something that's a super Hubble.
All right, So, so what does steroids and physics look like?
It sounds like that he said that it's on It's
(09:58):
like the old one, but on steroid. So I'm wondering,
first of all, is it legal? Is it allowed in
the international community? And second of all, what is a
physics steroid do? I think it's a pretty good analogy
because the physics steroid just makes you bigger. And being bigger,
as we'll talk about in detail in a moment, is
really important for telescopes because it means you can gather
(10:18):
more light, and more light you can gather the more
distant objects you can see. So being bigger really is better.
And when it comes to telescopes, all right, Well, we
were wondering, as usual, how many people out there had
heard of the James Webb Space Telescope and whether they
knew what we could possibly learn from it. So it's
usual Daniel went out there into the streets of uc
(10:40):
Irvine and ask people out there if they knew what
the James Webb Space Telescope is and what we could
learn from it. Here's what people had to say. Well,
I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
My guess would be to get tighter constraints on the
age of the universe. Again, I don't know what it's doing. Um,
(11:03):
one of the things that we need to know. UM,
you know, we could get tighter constraints one lifetime with
dark matter. UM, maybe on proton decay things like that.
I have not no, I've not I've not no I think, so, okay,
do you know what it's going to teach us when
you discovered using it? Is it the one that just
(11:24):
recently went up to like replace a different telescope? Um,
I think it's okay for x SO planet something like that.
I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, I've not no. The
James Webbs is going to be the successor to the Hubble.
It's going to be able to capture in red light
all the way back to the beginning of the universe,
where the light wasn't actually being recaptured and its immediate surroundings.
(11:48):
All right, well, I guess it's not up there yet,
so maybe that's why people haven't heard of it very much.
I was sort of disappointed. I mean, Hubble is so famous.
I figured that people must have heard of this, you device,
It's been all the talk of astronomy for years and
years and years, but almost nobody had heard of it.
Not even the guy wearing a NASA T shirt knew
what I was talking about. Oh, he was just wearing
(12:10):
it for the ironic value. Probably. I thought you were
going to say, because it's so cool and sexy. Is
that what you're gonna say? Ironically? Yes, that's what I meant. Yes,
So it seems like people out there aren't aware of
what the James Web space telescope. We'll teach us about
the universe and our origins and all sorts of crazy stuff.
So it's good that we're going to dig into it
today on the podcast. People at least a dozen people
(12:33):
will now know what it is after this podcast, me
you and the tend people I interviewed. Is that what
you mean? You're forgetting our editor also, no, I'm just kidding.
We know there are thousands of people out there listening,
and so we are very happy to tell people about
this great and interesting new tool. We have to extend signs.
All right, so let's jump into it, Daniel, what is
(12:53):
I guess? First of all, let's maybe take a step
back and just talk about what a space telescope is.
I mean, is at a telescope to look at space
or is it actually like made out of space or
does it take up a lot of space? What? What
does space telescope? A space telescope is a telescope that
is in space. Now, all these telescopes, of course look
at space, but if you're on the ground, you have
(13:15):
to look at space through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere
looks nice and clear, but you know it's not totally clear,
and it's wally. When it gets hot, it shakes, and
so photons have traveled for billions and billions of miles
to get here on Earth. For us to learn some
secrets of the universe, you don't want to bend and
twist and blur them just before they get to your telescope.
(13:37):
So if you put a telescope up in space, you
get to skip that last little fuzzy bit from the atmosphere,
all right, because at the atmosphere blocks some of the
light coming from space, and it also distorts it, right, Yeah,
it blocks some of the light, specifically the light that's
longer wavelength, and we can see what we call infrared.
That light is especially absorbed by the atmosphere, and that
(13:58):
light is really powerful because it's not absorbed by cosmic dust,
so it travels much more easily through the whole universe
until it gets here, and then it's basically blocked by
the atmosphere. But on top of that, as you said,
the atmosphere wiggles, and so you have to un somehow
undo that wiggle if you want to really crystal clear
picture of space. The other thing is that there aren't
(14:18):
clouds in space. You could build an awesome telescope here
on the ground and then apply for time and finally
get like ten hours in the telescope, and then it's
just cloudy that day and you just can't see anything.
Oh man, I was just about to copyright the term
space cloud. But you're telling me that there's no such thing. Well,
there's weather in space, as we talked about, but there
aren't clouds, and so the really the best place to
(14:41):
observe is up in space. Now it comes with some downsides,
of course, right. So then, so we have telescopes here
on Earth and on mountains, but those are still under
the atmosphere. And so the idea that um somebody had
at some point was to put a telescope in space
and then take pictures of the universe that way. That's right,
it's uninterrupted, you can keep the Earth behind you, you
(15:02):
don't have the atmosphere. You're open to different kinds of light.
Of course, the disadvantage is that it's a lot harder
to repair. You remember when Hubble went up, there was
like a fuzz on its mirror. Its billions of dollars
telescope finally launched and they turned it on and the
pictures were fuzzy, and they had to send astronauts to
repair it. And if you ever wait to like get
your cable repair, this takes even longer to get an
(15:24):
astronaut to repair. Can I get an astronaut to repair
my cable then also work? I think they're pretty qualified. Yeah,
but it's pretty expensive. I don't know what the service
plan is like. All right, So you put it out
into space and it can look out and it's has
a better view, but it's harder to maintain and fix
and to control I imagine, right, it's pretty tricky, yeah,
(15:46):
and it's complicated, and also you have to risk launching it.
You put this thing, your baby that you worked on
for ten or twenty years, that you've got billions of
dollars of funding and hundreds of people have helped you build.
You put it on a rocket and send it up
into space. And some fraction of these rockets they just blow.
So it could be the little baby blows up on
the path. That's a space telescope and the Hubble space telescope,
(16:09):
which maybe I think If you've been on the Internet
for a while, you've probably most likely have seen images
from the Hubble Space Telescope, which Louis launched in the
nineties I think or eighties. Yeah, I think it started
operations in the early two thousand's. Oh all right, I
have to check that. Actually I'm not sure. Just record,
(16:29):
just record all versions here, here's fifty versions every started
in October seven, seven seven. That sounds very incredible. Yeah,
Hubble has been around for a while, it's been providing
us amazing pictures. But this telescope is going to be
(16:50):
quite different from Hubble. I mean, they'll be in space still,
but it's got some significant upgrades. All right, So this
is the sequel to Hubble. Uh And so what are
what's better, better, and bigger about it? Well, first of all,
it's bigger. So Hubble had about four point five square
meters of observing area and this one is going to
have about twenty five. That means that it can gather
(17:12):
five times as much light. And that's really critical because
the reason we can see something that's far away is
because we focus on it and gather light for a while.
You need to get enough photons from those things before
you can see them. It's like having a bigger catchers
mit to catch light. You just get you're just you're
getting more stuff precisely. Think about that object that's billions
(17:33):
and billions of light years away. Where it is, it's
super bright. But then the photons as they leave that thing,
they spread out through the universe, so you've got fewer
and fewer photons per area, per volume actually, and so
when you get to Earth, you're getting a very small
number of photons. So the larger your catcher's mitt and
the longer you can point it there, the deeper in
space and the further back in time you can see.
(17:55):
So size is huge, literally, but this thing is so
big that it doesn't fit into a rocket. So they
had to design this really complex thing. It's made out
of eighteen hexagonal mirrors that will unfold in space to
make a big mirror. Wow, sounds tricky. It does sound tricky.
When that thing goes up, those guys are going to
(18:16):
be nervous. Well, we have high KI confidence in NASA,
and and so you're saying it's gonna let us see
further away. I guess you know, because the stuff that's
further away is giving off less light that's getting to us.
And so if we have a bigger lens, a bigger mirror,
bigger catchures myth, we can see those really far away
(18:39):
objects precisely. That's one way that it let us see
deeper into the universe. And there's a second, totally separate
way that will also help us see further into the universe,
and that's that it can look at a different kind
of light. Remember, the things that are far away are
also moving away from us more quickly. There's this relationship
between distance from us and speed, which something that's moving away,
(19:01):
and the further something is away from us, the fastest
moving away from us, which shifts the frequency of the light,
and so they called this red shift. The further something
is away from us, the fastest moving away from us,
the more the wavelength of light is shifted towards the red. Right,
like the whole signal of the light just becomes more red,
that's right, And at some point it passes out of
(19:23):
the band that Hubble can see images from the very
first things in the universe, which were really far away
at the time, and the images are just out getting here.
They're getting here, but they're so infrared shifted that Hubble
cannot see them. Oh wow, it's it's like you're blind
to those things. Yeah, so we're opening up a new
kind of eye. They can see light from those objects.
(19:44):
Even if you pointed Hubble at one of these objects
for a year and just focused on it and gathered
all the light, Hubble still could not see it. It's
just blind to it. So this is gonna be bigger,
and it's gonna be able to see in the infrared
where these really really distant objects are emitting. Wow, sound
like a pretty good sequel. I would pay to see
that movie. And it has some has some new features
(20:06):
to let it do that. Because to see in the infrared,
you have to stay very very cold, because infrared is
basically the transmission of heat. So to be sensitive to
infrared light, you have to have a really cold object,
and that introduces another layer of complexity. Not only are
you out in space, but you have to like cry
oh cool the whole thing. Oh I see, because if
you're if you're too warm, then your sensors can't pick
(20:30):
up these warm signals. Is that what it is like
it gets lost in the noise. Precisely, you have to
be really cold to be sensitive to infrared signals. So
they have to keep this thing less than fifty degrees kelvin.
That's colder than it is in space, is it. No,
it's pretty cold, and it's colder than the sort of
atmosphere of spaces, you know, the cosmic microwave background radiation
(20:52):
is like two point three degrees kelvin. But something that's
sitting out in space that absorbs sunlight will get hotter
than that. And so they had to build the shield
for this thing. This thing is a huge telescope and
it sits on top of a shield that's going to
protect it from the sun. Interesting needs a paracel. Yeah,
it's gonna sit in its own shadow for its entire life. Alright, cool, Well,
(21:12):
I'll sign up to see that sequel. It sounds like
it's gonna be bigger and redder. A should be the subtitle,
Space Telescope to Redder, cooler, further, further, redder, fainter but cooler,
but cooler. Here you go. All right, let's get into
(21:34):
when this thing is actually gonna launch and what we
can expect to tell us. But first let's take a
quick break. Alright, we're talking about the new and upcoming
(21:55):
James Web Space Telescope, and we it's we know it's
gonna be bigger, and it's going to be cooler technically
and figuratively and literally, and it's going to be pretty
cool in that it's going to let us see further
away objects and older objects. So Daniel, when can when
(22:15):
are they planning on launching this and when when will
it be ready to take cool picks of the universe. Well,
the official launch date is March, but that's sort of
the official launch date today. There's been a lot of
official launch dates. The original launch date was two thousand seven,
but obviously we missed that one and so they had
(22:36):
some trouble getting it ready or well, you know, this
thing is doing something that nobody's ever done before, and
when you develop these instruments that nobody's ever developed before,
then sometimes you run into snags and you have to
change plans. And so, like every big project, it's years
behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. But we
(22:56):
think it's going to launch. Yes, So there's been a
few days in launching the Space the Scope, and so
I was curious, so I asked Alex again how she
felt about the new launch plan for Yeah, so we
we recognize that it has been delayed, but it it
is full of things that have literally never been done before. Like,
(23:17):
not only is the science going to be great, but
in order to do that, the things that people have
made just to make this work, which include this giant
eighteen section segmented me or the biggest thing we've ever
sent into space, and to do all that, the technology
that we needed is incredibly incredibly technical. Um and so yeah,
(23:38):
it's taken longer than we need than we thought it would,
but that's because it is so profoundly innovative, and the
science is going to be amazing because we thought of
all these new things to make it happen. I am
very confident that it's going to launch, all right, So
that's pretty soon March. I mean that's uh, probably sooner
(23:59):
than next Adventures equel, I think, And hopefully it'll last longer. Yeah,
and hopefully. But I hear it's going to cost about
the same as this telescope a few billion dollars or
make up a few billion. We should just make the profits,
take the profits from adventures and put it to space astronomy.
Oh my god, I've been saying that forever. The amount
of money that we spend on wasted fidget spinners and
(24:23):
movies compared to the science budget of this country, it's
embarrassing and um, probably equally mind blowing. Well, this thing
originally was going to cost about five million bucks. That's
when they started planning it in But by two thousand
and six the budget had exploded to four and a
half billion dollars, and now the total budget is just
(24:45):
just shy of ten billion dollars. That's quite the accounting
call they probably had to have to figure out these numbers.
But um, but probably worth it, I'm sure. I mean
nine billion, that's like the cost of one jet airplane, right, Yeah,
it's totally worth it. For secrets of the universe, for
things that nobody has ever seen before. It's definitely gonna
(25:06):
be worth it. And you know, the day that they launched,
the day that this thing unfold and turns on and
sends down the first pictures, that's going to be an
incredible moment in the history of you know, humanity. I
think it's gonna be an exciting day for astronomers. They
gonna gathered around the computer screen to see that first
picture So then let's talk about where they're gonna put this.
I mean, I know it's going to be out in space, um,
(25:27):
but space is pretty big. So Houses is going to
be in the same place where Hubble is. Like, it's
as it's gonna sit next to Hubble or is it
doing something totally different? Well, Hubble is in orbit around
the Earth. It's about three forty miles up. And that's
convenient because if you do need to send Comcast or
your cable guy up to fix it, then you can
get there. Right. We have space shuttles, and or we
(25:49):
had space shuttles, but now we have ways to get
up into orbit to fix this stuff. That works for Hubble,
but it doesn't work for the James Web Space Telescope
because it's a different kind of telescope and in the
to be blocked from the light of the Sun and
the Moon and the Earth constantly. Oh, I see, it
needs to get away from things that are reflecting or
are bright, right, And so they put it out in
(26:12):
this point. It's called a lagrange point. There's several places
around a large body where you can orbit in this
sort of stationary location. They're called lagrange points, and there's
one is called the second Lagrange point. And basically, you
take the Sun, you draw a line from the Sun
to the Earth, and then you keep going and there's
a point there where you can stay in stable orbit
around the Sun and the Earth. And the cool thing
(26:34):
there is that you keep the same relationship with the
Sun and the Earth at all times, so you can
keep sort of all these objects that are too bright
behind your sun shield. Oh, I see, it's like you
don't um need to be spinning around the object to
stay in orbit because you're sort of far enough away
where the gravity is weaker. Yeah, it's's there's a stable
(26:55):
little spot there where you can hang out. So you
move around the Sun, sort of following the Earth in
the same angle with respect to the Sun as the
Earth does at all times. And that way you can
sort of put your back towards the Earth and also
the Sun. And so this thing needs to manage, and
it has this one sun shield right has to block
the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon at all times,
(27:15):
and so it keeps all those things sort of behind
it by being a little bit out further than the Earth.
So it's gonna be like almost a million miles away
from the Earth a million miles a million miles, which
means repair will be essentially impossible. Wow, can you send
robots to try to fix it or clean the lens?
You probably could, but they will probably cost a billion dollars.
(27:37):
We don't have like, you know, standard robots roaming the
Solar system to fix stuff. We used to it all
to make the telescope. We forgot to leave a little
bit for the room, but needed to clean it up.
Or maybe the next time, you know, we're sending our
cable repair guys out to Mars, they can just sort
of stop off at the James Web telescope and fix it.
Or that's that's probably the next sequel, you know, to
(27:57):
make it a trilogy. The next Space is going to
rescue the second space perhaps, or maybe it'll just work fine.
Maybe the sun shield will unfold and the telescope will
unfold and will open up and just give us beautiful
pictures from day one. Let's be optimistic. And so then
as it as the Earth goes around the Sun, this
(28:19):
telescope is going to kind of maintain that the Earth
and the Sun behind it, right like it's going to
rotate also kind of like a giant clock precisely. You
draw that line from the Sun to the Earth and
you extend it through the Earth, it'll hit the James
Web space telescope. It should be fixed always. Yeah, yeah,
that's pretty interesting. If you want to keep it cool
(28:41):
and you want to see into the infrared, and you
want to see deep, deep into the universe. It really
is the best place to put a space telescope. Oh,
I see it sits in the shadow that the Earth
makes from the Sun. Well, the right is also bright. Yeah,
but it will see a constant eclipse. The Earth will
be constantly in front of the Sun, and so that
helps block it. But also it has its own son
(29:03):
shield right that it keeps the Earth, the Moon, and
the Sun all behind it at all times. Oh man,
is it going to take a selfie? That would be
pretty cool, Like if it takes a picture backwards and
it's like to get the Earth eclipsing the Sun. That
that was I hope, I hope they're putting in a
backwards facing camera. They're just for that selfie. I just
want that selfie. You know. We don't build space telescopes
(29:25):
for selfies. We build them to look out into the
universe and see other stuff. I think there's already billions
of selfies being taken on Earth at any moment. I see,
I see. We should just call him spaces. Let's write
a proposal to NASA for the Jorge him space telescope selfie.
Everyone on Earth take a duck face at the same
time at the count of three. That's worth ten billion
dollars for sure, I think everyone. I think, I'm sure
(29:49):
everyone on Earth would pay a dollar to get that
selfie sst selfie Space telescope a dollar. Let's see, Let's
do a fundraiser. Let's see how far we it. I'll
start the Indiego go right right now, we can show
people how easy it is to raise money for science
when you're doing something ridiculous. All right, well, let's get
(30:11):
now into what it's going to tell us about the universe.
What is this new lens into the cosmos going to
reveal that we haven't seen before in this new sequel.
But first, let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel,
(30:38):
this James Webb space telescope that's new is going to
open up our eyes to new things in the universe. Right,
It's it's going to let us see further A rudder
and cooler. So what are some of the things we
can expect to tell us. Well, like in any sequel,
it's gonna hit the best points of the previous one, right,
it's gonna double down and all the good stuff I see.
(31:01):
And so we're gonna see further away, which means we
might be able to see like the first stars that
formed in the universe, which are invisible to bubble because
they're so red shifted. We might see the first galaxies formed,
and we might really get to see what it's like
on another planet. What all right, let's bring it down
that there was a lot of cool stuff there. Um,
(31:22):
So what do you mean the first stars, Like, we're
gonna see them be born or we're going to see
them you know, still sort of burning in the universe
historical sense, Yeah, we're gonna look back in time and
see the first stars that formed in the universe. Remember
the universe began, and then we had a lot of
hydrogen gas and a little bit helium. And these days
(31:45):
stars have more heavy stuff in them because there's been
stars around to burn and diffuse and to create carbon
and iron and that stuff. But back in the early days,
we had the first stars forming just out of that
raw gas from the Big Bang, and we think we
know what those stars might have looked like. We think
they're probably all much much bigger than the sun, and
they burned out in just a few million years or
(32:06):
tens of millions of years. But we don't really know
what did star formation look like when there had never
been a star, And so that's something we'd like to see.
And right now that light is hitting us, but it's
too red shifted and too faint for us to see it.
So we just need to turn this eyeball on so
we can see what those stars look like. Oh I see,
So I mean these stars aren't by now long gone
(32:29):
like right now in this instant there, they're they were
gone a long time ago, but the ones that were
really really far away, we might still be able to
see them because it took so long for the light
to get here. That's right. We have this amazing feature
that we can look backwards in time by looking further
away because light takes so long to get here. So
something really interesting that happened a long long time ago,
(32:51):
fourteen billion light years or so, he's just now getting
here on Earth. So we're looking to get to the
furthest shell, right, But it has to be. It has
to be. The stars are formed at the very edge
of the universe. The stars have formed really far from here.
We don't know if there is an edge to the
universe or what's going on over there. But you're right,
we can't see things that happened a long time ago
(33:11):
close by. That light is now left and it's is
being observed by aliens somewhere on another planet. But the
light that was created from these first stars fourteen billion
years ago is still flying through the universe. If it's
if it came from really really far away and it's
just now getting to the Earth. Wow, And these first
stars are different than the ones we see now? Are
(33:32):
they interesting and different? Well, the stars that we see
now have all sorts of mix of gases in them
because their formed from the leftovers of other stars that
have died. So remember, the universe is many cycles of
star life and death. In the first stars formed, they
clumped together this gas and burned and created heavier elements
like helium and beryllium and lithium and oxygen, and then
(33:54):
then they blew up, and then more stars formed from
the remnants from the sharks of those ours, and they
could burn even hotter because they're more massive and they
have heavier stuff in them, and eventually you get heavier
and heavier and stuff, and that's how you make you know,
iron and all the stuff that makes us up. But
were many cycles in, so we want to see the
first cycle. We want to see how this whole series
(34:14):
got started, right, We want to see the O G stars. Yeah,
and you know, star formation seems sort of basic. It's like, well,
gas clumps together and you get stars, but it's actually
really complicated and we still don't understand it. For example,
we look out at galaxies all around us, and we
see that some of them are still making new stars,
other ones are not. Some galaxies seem like dead, and
(34:36):
we don't understand the difference. We don't understand why some
galaxies keep making stars and other ones don't. So we'd
have to go back to the very beginning and see
the original stars and see what started it all. Pretty
cool and so well, you said, we will also get
to see some of the first galaxies. What do you mean,
have there been second galaxies since? Yeah? In exactly the
same way that we don't really understand how stars formed
(34:58):
in the first moments. We also don't really understand what
the first galaxies looked like. Now, our galaxy is the
ones that you're familiar with, Like the Milky Way has
a bar in the middle and then these lines swirling around.
It is a spiral galaxy, right, it looks like a swirl,
looks like a swirl. But the older galaxies that would
look at if we look really far back in time,
(35:19):
not as far back as James Webbill tell us, the
galaxies don't look like that. They're sort of just like
little clumps, are more like blobs, and they don't have
these swirl shapes. And we don't really understand how did
you get from the blobs to the swirls Where all
the galaxies back then blobs and then the galaxies we
have now are like combinations of galaxies where they've merged
together through collisions and formed these super galaxies which then
(35:40):
becomes swirls or is there a different process? Interesting because
so before they so you're saying, before galaxies look different
than they are and and we kind of don't know
how to make that connection. Yeah, we don't know how
they started. And most interestingly, we don't know the role
that black holes played, Like we think that there's a
black hole the center of a galaxy, like there is
(36:01):
one the center of the Milky Way, but we don't
know what the cause and effect is, Like does every
galaxy eventually form a black hole because you get so
much stuff in the middle, or do galaxies form around
black holes? Like do black holes cause galaxies or the
other way around. So we'd like to go back to
the original galaxies and see are these the first black
holes formed in the universe. It's the old you know,
(36:24):
chicken and the black hole problem, which one came first?
I don't think I've ever seen a chicken lay a
black hole, but i'd like to. Yeah, maybe with this
new telescope. Who knows, right the possibilities are in add
that to the list of science missions for the James
Webb Telescope. So that's when I want to see in
a sequel. That's definitely that's prequel territory. But you know,
(36:47):
I think there's there's something here that I want people
to understand, which is that seeing the first thing, seeing
the origins of stuff really gives you a sense for
like why something is. You know, it could have been
that the universe didn't have galaxies that it's just a
bunch of stars distributed through space. Why do we have
galaxies at all? What made that happen? And why our
galaxies the size they are not ten jillion times bigger
(37:09):
or much much smaller. And I think the clues to
those big questions about like the nature of space that's
out there lies in the origins of galaxy formation, which
we will get to watch. Wow. Yeah, it sounds like
this telescope is not just gonna let us travel further
out into the universe or see with more clarity, but
it's actually like kind of like a time machine, you know,
(37:30):
like you can go back in time further and see
closer to the origin and birth of the universe precisely.
And when you want to understand how why things are
the way they are, you got to go back to
the beginning, and this is going to take us back there.
You're exactly right, it's like a time machine. It's gonna
let us see light from the very first moments that
there was even light in the universe, because you know,
(37:53):
the universe had these dark ages after all this stuff
was created, It was just sort of dark for a
while before the first stars formed, So we're gonna it
to see the first light that was generated from stars. Interesting,
and then somebody said, let there be light. Is that
what you're saying, Daniel? That sounds like something from our
writer's room. Man, all right? And then you said one
(38:13):
last thing that was pretty mind blowing to me is
that this new telescope might let us actually kind of
find out if there's life out there in the universe. Yeah,
we have these amazing telescopes now that can help us
find other planets like Kepler and tests. These are designed
to see that there are other planets there around other stars.
And in the last five, ten twenty years that field
(38:35):
is exploded, we found now thousands of stars that have
planets around them. Problem with those telescopes is they're really
good at seeing that the planet is there, but they're
not good at studying the planet. They're like more about breath.
You know, they can find the stuff, but once they
find it, they can't like zoom in on it very well.
Whereas James Webb is great at zooming in on stuff
(38:57):
cool because it has kind of a it's a more
powerful full who lends right, like it's bigger and so
you can with better focus, and so you might actually,
you know better, peer into these distant planets, right and
maybe make out things that would tell you if there
is life out there exactly. Just like if you're searching
a beach for I know, somebody's lost wedding ring or something.
(39:18):
You can use a metal detector to tell if something
is there. But when you hear a signal, you want
to dig down and look ut the magnifying glass from
microscope and see what you found. You want to zoom
in and gory detail. So James Webb what he can do.
It's not great. It's finding that there are planets there, right.
You wouldn't want to search a beach with a magnifying glass.
That's what essentially would be like looking for exoplanets with
(39:38):
James Webb. But once you found one, then you point
your super hubble at it, you point James Webb at it,
and you can study the atmosphere of these planets. If
they're close enough, it might even give us pictures of
the planets themselves. Wow, it would be like the ultimate
paparazzi tool. Yeah, we can spy on what's going on
in those planets. Uh, what if you turn it around
(40:01):
and spun and pointed at at Earth then and what
could we see. We can see vain cartoonists making a
duck face. There you go. That's that's that's worth ten
billion dollars right there. And they have this really cool
instrument on it. The problem, of course, when you point
a telescope at a planet that's really far away is
that it's also next to a star, and that star
(40:22):
sort of drowns it out. And so to keep your
instrument from getting like swamped by the star, they have
this thing called a coronagraph which they used to basically
block the life from the star. They move it so
that it blocks the life from the star and you
can only see around the star the corona of the star.
People do this to study the corona of the sun,
block out the Sun. It has at like a little
(40:43):
dot in the middle. M m. It's a little the
middle to block out the life from the star, so
you could only see the stuff near it avoid your
instrument from getting like swamped and saturated from all the
light from that star. So we could that will help
us visualize these exoplanets, so it doesn't look like a J. J.
Abrams version of Star Wars sequel with all the lens
(41:04):
flares exactly, lens flares, not documentary lens flares, not real physics,
all right, And so to close out the episode, we
thought we'd have Alex tell us a little bit about
what we can expect from the James Webb Telescope. So
this telescope is the biggest telescope that we've ever built.
(41:24):
This is really meant to answer some of the big
questions like, you know, why where do we come from?
And are we alone? And the possibilities for what's out
there are tremendous, and so we're gonna see all the
way back, you know, into our deepest history, but then
all the way out to to you know, what could
(41:45):
be out there now. And you know, we're probably not
going to see another mission of this, of this magnitude
in my lifetime. Well, you can really hear the excitement
in the voice of these astronomers. You know, we are
building them where they're building a huge new toy, and
we're paying for it, but they get to see the light.
And so I'm excited for them, and I'm excited for
(42:05):
what humanity is gonna learn. I'm excited for what those
first stars and first galaxies are gonna look like and
I'm excited to see pictures of other planets. Yeah, that's definitely.
I think a sequel that will get me to pay
for another movie ticket ticket. I think joking aside, I
would definitely pay more taxes if it meant we've got
to build more awesome space telescopes. You know, Daniel, you
(42:27):
can't pay more taxes if you wanted to know. But
I can't fund the space telescope with my income. Everybody's
got to pay more taxes to make that happen. All right, Well,
hopefully this will get more people excited about it, and
so when the trailer drops, people will um share it
and be even more excited. And so stay tuned. It's
coming out in a couple of years, and hopefully it
(42:48):
will tell us all about where we came from. I'm excited.
I hope you're excited, and we'll look forward to unpacking
the discoveries of the James Web space telescopes sometime in
late you one, Well, thanks for listening, see you next time.
(43:10):
Before you still have a question after listening to all
these explanations, please drop us the line we'd love to
hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio from
(43:32):
More podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, Daniel, how do you feel about sequels? Well, in general,
they tend to be sort of bigger, more expensive, and
early on schedule. I think bigger and more expensive is
the whole point of sequels. Well, can you imagine what
you liked? My favorite sequel is called the PhD Movie Too,
totally unbiased opinion, totally unbiased. I wrote and produced it,
(00:29):
but I think it was good. Yeah. Well when I
when we made it, I took inspiration from like, you know,
The Empire Strikes Back and you know The Matrix Too.
I think those are all movies that did pretty well
on the sequels. Oh, I see you meant movie sequels. Yes,
what kind of sequels did you think I was talking about? Hey,
it's the podcast, So I was thinking science experiment sequels
(00:53):
of course, Indiana Jones and the Thesis of Dude, Rise
of the Protons. Hi. I'm or Having, a cartoonist and
(01:17):
the creator of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
particle physicist, and I actually am a fan of movie sequels.
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of My Heart Radio. I think this is
our episode number a hundred or so I think we're
like twenty, so I don't even know if it counts
as a sequel anymore. What would that be called. I
(01:37):
think it's called episode A hundred and twenty, and it's
got to be a Latin name for it or something
like de sentiqual. Well, I think we probably are going
to peek out around two hundreds, So if people can
just hang on and wait for that one, maybe we'll
come out before Avengers. We are slowly building the dramatic tension,
(01:59):
So welcome to five guys. It's about the universe and
all the amazing and beautiful and mind blowing things to
see out there in the far reaches of the cosmos.
It's about all the things that you want to understand,
all the things that you want to see about the universe,
all the things that you'd like us to explain to you.
So that's our job here today is to take you
(02:20):
on a tour of the cosmos, help you visualize and
help you really understand the universe that we find ourselves in. Yeah,
and sometimes we don't just talk about the things that
are out there or that might be out there in
the universe, but we also kind of like to talk
about how we see these things out there and how
we know that they're there, and how can we know
(02:40):
more about them? That's right. One important role of science
is to develop new eyes into the universe, new ways
to look out there and discover crazy, mind blowing stuff
that informs our understanding of how everything works. And so
we talk sometimes about how particle accelerators give us a
new vision of the very small, or if we look
at a strophysical new trinos, we can see the universe
(03:02):
in a different way. And so every time we build
a new telescope or a new device or new something,
it's like we're opening a new kind of eyeball. Yeah,
because there is a lot out there for us to
see and discover, and it's pretty amazing that we can
see a lot of it from our little you know,
spherical rock here floating in the middle space, in a
(03:22):
corner of the galaxy, in the in the little corridor
of the universe, and almost spherical rock, remember our podcast,
that's right, almost spherical Yeah. But it is incredible that
we can learn anything, you know, that without going anywhere,
we can learn so much about this vast cosmos just
by sitting on our little home and that relies on
us gathering all this information. And if you think about
(03:43):
it from the other perspective, there's so much information about
the universe just washing over us right now. You know,
we know about light, and we know about neutrinos and
all sorts of other particles. But we think that there
are other kinds of matter washing over us that are
still in this sable, and there might be yet new
forms of matter we haven't yet even imagined that contained
(04:05):
incredible revelations about the universe. We haven't even figured out
how to listen to that information yet, how to open
up an eyeball that will let us see the universe
in that way. Oh, man, Daniel, you just gave me
galactic fomo like cosmic fear of missing out. What if
there's something, you know, revelatory about the reality of the
universe right now going through us, coming from space in
(04:28):
the in the light flashing over is but nobody's looking
What if almost certainly right, think about the history of science.
You know, for millions and millions of years, light that
contained information about the universe was hitting the Earth and
there was nobody even looking up. And then for thousands
of years we looked up, but we had no idea
what that information contained. It's only the last few decades
(04:49):
we're starting to get a clue for how much information
there is. So I'm sure we've only begun to crack
that nut. Man, what if we started looking out and
we missed the first part the US movie and we
just catch the sequel. I mean, how confusing would that be.
We are looking at the universe sort of almost fourteen
billion years after the story started, but fortunately the movie
(05:11):
started also very far away, and so it's just getting
here now. We can go back and watch the original prequels. Oh,
I see, this is not like an episode fourteen billion
in the movie of the Universe. No, episode fourteen billion
is happening right here on Earth right now. But we
hope that episode zero is still out there and that
(05:31):
if we get in powerful enough telescope, we can see
as it arrives on Earth because it took so long
to get here. All right, So today we'll be talking
about one such tool to look out into the universe.
And it's a pretty exciting too. It's still under construction,
but it's uh planned to be launched pretty soon, right
in the next couple of years. Yeah, they actually finished
(05:53):
building it a couple of years ago, but they're still
sort of tweaking it and preparing it. It's a really
complex device and then to really get it ready for launch.
It's going to be a delicate thing when it finally
goes up into space, and it's sort of the child
or the successor to something that everybody is familiar with,
one of the most famous experiments in astronomy. So today
on the podcast, we will be asking the question what
(06:20):
will the James Web space telescope tell us about the universe?
And you might be familiar with space telescopes in general
because of Hubble. Hubble, of course named after Edwin Hubble,
who discovered that the universe was expanding, is provided these
gorgeous pictures of the Cosmos had looked further and further
out into the universe and anything before it. It's an
(06:41):
incredible technological marvel. And now we're talking about basically Hubble
two point oh, how about the next generation or if
this was like horror movies, would be like son of Hubble,
that hub will have a son. He might object to that.
You know, well, Hubble's son was probably named Hubble actually
just lives, so that would be Terrible Hubble, son of
(07:02):
Hubble Hubble episode two. Yeah. The real name for it, though,
is the James Webb Space Telescope, named after an administrator
of NASA who had a big role in the Apollo program.
And I hope that James Webb becomes as famous as Hubble,
and hope that James Webb Space Telescope teaches us as
much about the universe as the Hubble did. Yeah. So, actually,
(07:24):
one of the reasons I brought up the PhD movie
too in the opening of the episode is that that
those were two movies, PhD Movie One and Tune, which
that started real graduate students and real scientists and postdocs
in the movie. And so it just so happened that
one of the stars of the movies is now a
scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope project. Her name
(07:46):
is Alexander Lockwood, and she's awesome. She has a PhD
in astronomy from cal Tech and she works on it
right now. And so I went on and I asked
her what she thought is exciting and knew about this
new telescope. Yeah, so I called her out since we
were I knew we were talking about this space Telescope,
and I asked her to tell us a little bit
about what this space telescope is and how it's different
(08:10):
than the Hubble Telescope. So here's what you had to say.
The James Web Space Telescope is NASA's next huge mission.
It is going to tell us new things about all
aspects of the universe, from planets to galaxies to the
very beginning of what we know in the universe. It
still works like Hubble does, like a giant telescope in space,
(08:31):
but it's seven times bigger, and it's going to see
back even further and even deeper into all sorts of things.
So it's it's basically Hubble on steroids. It's not replacing Hubble,
because Hubble's still up there and working. But they're gonna
work side by side and tell us things you know
that we can't even imagine. All Right, it's an ambitious sequel.
The thing is what he's saying. You know it's been
(08:53):
working out, you know it's ripped. They didn't just try
to do the same thing as if first one. They're
really trying to upgrade it and let us see further
into the universe and try to answer some of the
new and bigger questions we have in astronomy, right, Yeah,
And you don't get to build one of these things
very often, and so when you do, you have to
(09:14):
balance being really ambitious about developing new technologies that are
going to give you incredible new information about the universe
with actually making the thing work. And so they always
want to push the boundaries a little bit. But then
again you also actually want to get the thing funded
and up into space. And so here they've tried to
go way beyond what they did with Hubble. They try
(09:36):
to do something much more impressive and much more powerful
because Hubble still working, right, You don't just want another Hubble,
You want something better than Hubble. You don't want a
double Hubble. I take ten Hubbles. But you know, if
you're gonna launch something, you want something that's a super Hubble.
All right, So, so what does steroids and physics look like?
It sounds like that he said that it's on It's
(09:58):
like the old one, but on steroid. So I'm wondering,
first of all, is it legal? Is it allowed in
the international community? And second of all, what is a
physics steroid do? I think it's a pretty good analogy
because the physics steroid just makes you bigger. And being bigger,
as we'll talk about in detail in a moment, is
really important for telescopes because it means you can gather
(10:18):
more light, and more light you can gather the more
distant objects you can see. So being bigger really is better.
And when it comes to telescopes, all right, Well, we
were wondering, as usual, how many people out there had
heard of the James Webb Space Telescope and whether they
knew what we could possibly learn from it. So it's
usual Daniel went out there into the streets of uc
(10:40):
Irvine and ask people out there if they knew what
the James Webb Space Telescope is and what we could
learn from it. Here's what people had to say. Well,
I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
My guess would be to get tighter constraints on the
age of the universe. Again, I don't know what it's doing. Um,
(11:03):
one of the things that we need to know. UM,
you know, we could get tighter constraints one lifetime with
dark matter. UM, maybe on proton decay things like that.
I have not no, I've not I've not no I think, so, okay,
do you know what it's going to teach us when
you discovered using it? Is it the one that just
(11:24):
recently went up to like replace a different telescope? Um,
I think it's okay for x SO planet something like that.
I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, I've not no. The
James Webbs is going to be the successor to the Hubble.
It's going to be able to capture in red light
all the way back to the beginning of the universe,
where the light wasn't actually being recaptured and its immediate surroundings.
(11:48):
All right, well, I guess it's not up there yet,
so maybe that's why people haven't heard of it very much.
I was sort of disappointed. I mean, Hubble is so famous.
I figured that people must have heard of this, you device,
It's been all the talk of astronomy for years and
years and years, but almost nobody had heard of it.
Not even the guy wearing a NASA T shirt knew
what I was talking about. Oh, he was just wearing
(12:10):
it for the ironic value. Probably. I thought you were
going to say, because it's so cool and sexy. Is
that what you're gonna say? Ironically? Yes, that's what I meant. Yes,
So it seems like people out there aren't aware of
what the James Web space telescope. We'll teach us about
the universe and our origins and all sorts of crazy stuff.
So it's good that we're going to dig into it
today on the podcast. People at least a dozen people
(12:33):
will now know what it is after this podcast, me
you and the tend people I interviewed. Is that what
you mean? You're forgetting our editor also, no, I'm just kidding.
We know there are thousands of people out there listening,
and so we are very happy to tell people about
this great and interesting new tool. We have to extend signs.
All right, so let's jump into it, Daniel, what is
(12:53):
I guess? First of all, let's maybe take a step
back and just talk about what a space telescope is.
I mean, is at a telescope to look at space
or is it actually like made out of space or
does it take up a lot of space? What? What
does space telescope? A space telescope is a telescope that
is in space. Now, all these telescopes, of course look
at space, but if you're on the ground, you have
(13:15):
to look at space through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere
looks nice and clear, but you know it's not totally clear,
and it's wally. When it gets hot, it shakes, and
so photons have traveled for billions and billions of miles
to get here on Earth. For us to learn some
secrets of the universe, you don't want to bend and
twist and blur them just before they get to your telescope.
(13:37):
So if you put a telescope up in space, you
get to skip that last little fuzzy bit from the atmosphere,
all right, because at the atmosphere blocks some of the
light coming from space, and it also distorts it, right, Yeah,
it blocks some of the light, specifically the light that's
longer wavelength, and we can see what we call infrared.
That light is especially absorbed by the atmosphere, and that
(13:58):
light is really powerful because it's not absorbed by cosmic dust,
so it travels much more easily through the whole universe
until it gets here, and then it's basically blocked by
the atmosphere. But on top of that, as you said,
the atmosphere wiggles, and so you have to un somehow
undo that wiggle if you want to really crystal clear
picture of space. The other thing is that there aren't
(14:18):
clouds in space. You could build an awesome telescope here
on the ground and then apply for time and finally
get like ten hours in the telescope, and then it's
just cloudy that day and you just can't see anything.
Oh man, I was just about to copyright the term
space cloud. But you're telling me that there's no such thing. Well,
there's weather in space, as we talked about, but there
aren't clouds, and so the really the best place to
(14:41):
observe is up in space. Now it comes with some downsides,
of course, right. So then, so we have telescopes here
on Earth and on mountains, but those are still under
the atmosphere. And so the idea that um somebody had
at some point was to put a telescope in space
and then take pictures of the universe that way. That's right,
it's uninterrupted, you can keep the Earth behind you, you
(15:02):
don't have the atmosphere. You're open to different kinds of light.
Of course, the disadvantage is that it's a lot harder
to repair. You remember when Hubble went up, there was
like a fuzz on its mirror. Its billions of dollars
telescope finally launched and they turned it on and the
pictures were fuzzy, and they had to send astronauts to
repair it. And if you ever wait to like get
your cable repair, this takes even longer to get an
(15:24):
astronaut to repair. Can I get an astronaut to repair
my cable then also work? I think they're pretty qualified. Yeah,
but it's pretty expensive. I don't know what the service
plan is like. All right, So you put it out
into space and it can look out and it's has
a better view, but it's harder to maintain and fix
and to control I imagine, right, it's pretty tricky, yeah,
(15:46):
and it's complicated, and also you have to risk launching it.
You put this thing, your baby that you worked on
for ten or twenty years, that you've got billions of
dollars of funding and hundreds of people have helped you build.
You put it on a rocket and send it up
into space. And some fraction of these rockets they just blow.
So it could be the little baby blows up on
the path. That's a space telescope and the Hubble space telescope,
(16:09):
which maybe I think If you've been on the Internet
for a while, you've probably most likely have seen images
from the Hubble Space Telescope, which Louis launched in the
nineties I think or eighties. Yeah, I think it started
operations in the early two thousand's. Oh all right, I
have to check that. Actually I'm not sure. Just record,
(16:29):
just record all versions here, here's fifty versions every started
in October seven, seven seven. That sounds very incredible. Yeah,
Hubble has been around for a while, it's been providing
us amazing pictures. But this telescope is going to be
(16:50):
quite different from Hubble. I mean, they'll be in space still,
but it's got some significant upgrades. All right, So this
is the sequel to Hubble. Uh And so what are
what's better, better, and bigger about it? Well, first of all,
it's bigger. So Hubble had about four point five square
meters of observing area and this one is going to
have about twenty five. That means that it can gather
(17:12):
five times as much light. And that's really critical because
the reason we can see something that's far away is
because we focus on it and gather light for a while.
You need to get enough photons from those things before
you can see them. It's like having a bigger catchers
mit to catch light. You just get you're just you're
getting more stuff precisely. Think about that object that's billions
(17:33):
and billions of light years away. Where it is, it's
super bright. But then the photons as they leave that thing,
they spread out through the universe, so you've got fewer
and fewer photons per area, per volume actually, and so
when you get to Earth, you're getting a very small
number of photons. So the larger your catcher's mitt and
the longer you can point it there, the deeper in
space and the further back in time you can see.
(17:55):
So size is huge, literally, but this thing is so
big that it doesn't fit into a rocket. So they
had to design this really complex thing. It's made out
of eighteen hexagonal mirrors that will unfold in space to
make a big mirror. Wow, sounds tricky. It does sound tricky.
When that thing goes up, those guys are going to
(18:16):
be nervous. Well, we have high KI confidence in NASA,
and and so you're saying it's gonna let us see
further away. I guess you know, because the stuff that's
further away is giving off less light that's getting to us.
And so if we have a bigger lens, a bigger mirror,
bigger catchures myth, we can see those really far away
(18:39):
objects precisely. That's one way that it let us see
deeper into the universe. And there's a second, totally separate
way that will also help us see further into the universe,
and that's that it can look at a different kind
of light. Remember, the things that are far away are
also moving away from us more quickly. There's this relationship
between distance from us and speed, which something that's moving away,
(19:01):
and the further something is away from us, the fastest
moving away from us, which shifts the frequency of the light,
and so they called this red shift. The further something
is away from us, the fastest moving away from us,
the more the wavelength of light is shifted towards the red. Right,
like the whole signal of the light just becomes more red,
that's right, And at some point it passes out of
(19:23):
the band that Hubble can see images from the very
first things in the universe, which were really far away
at the time, and the images are just out getting here.
They're getting here, but they're so infrared shifted that Hubble
cannot see them. Oh wow, it's it's like you're blind
to those things. Yeah, so we're opening up a new
kind of eye. They can see light from those objects.
(19:44):
Even if you pointed Hubble at one of these objects
for a year and just focused on it and gathered
all the light, Hubble still could not see it. It's
just blind to it. So this is gonna be bigger,
and it's gonna be able to see in the infrared
where these really really distant objects are emitting. Wow, sound
like a pretty good sequel. I would pay to see
that movie. And it has some has some new features
(20:06):
to let it do that. Because to see in the infrared,
you have to stay very very cold, because infrared is
basically the transmission of heat. So to be sensitive to
infrared light, you have to have a really cold object,
and that introduces another layer of complexity. Not only are
you out in space, but you have to like cry
oh cool the whole thing. Oh I see, because if
you're if you're too warm, then your sensors can't pick
(20:30):
up these warm signals. Is that what it is like
it gets lost in the noise. Precisely, you have to
be really cold to be sensitive to infrared signals. So
they have to keep this thing less than fifty degrees kelvin.
That's colder than it is in space, is it. No,
it's pretty cold, and it's colder than the sort of
atmosphere of spaces, you know, the cosmic microwave background radiation
(20:52):
is like two point three degrees kelvin. But something that's
sitting out in space that absorbs sunlight will get hotter
than that. And so they had to build the shield
for this thing. This thing is a huge telescope and
it sits on top of a shield that's going to
protect it from the sun. Interesting needs a paracel. Yeah,
it's gonna sit in its own shadow for its entire life. Alright, cool, Well,
(21:12):
I'll sign up to see that sequel. It sounds like
it's gonna be bigger and redder. A should be the subtitle,
Space Telescope to Redder, cooler, further, further, redder, fainter but cooler,
but cooler. Here you go. All right, let's get into
(21:34):
when this thing is actually gonna launch and what we
can expect to tell us. But first let's take a
quick break. Alright, we're talking about the new and upcoming
(21:55):
James Web Space Telescope, and we it's we know it's
gonna be bigger, and it's going to be cooler technically
and figuratively and literally, and it's going to be pretty
cool in that it's going to let us see further
away objects and older objects. So Daniel, when can when
(22:15):
are they planning on launching this and when when will
it be ready to take cool picks of the universe. Well,
the official launch date is March, but that's sort of
the official launch date today. There's been a lot of
official launch dates. The original launch date was two thousand seven,
but obviously we missed that one and so they had
(22:36):
some trouble getting it ready or well, you know, this
thing is doing something that nobody's ever done before, and
when you develop these instruments that nobody's ever developed before,
then sometimes you run into snags and you have to
change plans. And so, like every big project, it's years
behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. But we
(22:56):
think it's going to launch. Yes, So there's been a
few days in launching the Space the Scope, and so
I was curious, so I asked Alex again how she
felt about the new launch plan for Yeah, so we
we recognize that it has been delayed, but it it
is full of things that have literally never been done before. Like,
(23:17):
not only is the science going to be great, but
in order to do that, the things that people have
made just to make this work, which include this giant
eighteen section segmented me or the biggest thing we've ever
sent into space, and to do all that, the technology
that we needed is incredibly incredibly technical. Um and so yeah,
(23:38):
it's taken longer than we need than we thought it would,
but that's because it is so profoundly innovative, and the
science is going to be amazing because we thought of
all these new things to make it happen. I am
very confident that it's going to launch, all right, So
that's pretty soon March. I mean that's uh, probably sooner
(23:59):
than next Adventures equel, I think, And hopefully it'll last longer. Yeah,
and hopefully. But I hear it's going to cost about
the same as this telescope a few billion dollars or
make up a few billion. We should just make the profits,
take the profits from adventures and put it to space astronomy.
Oh my god, I've been saying that forever. The amount
of money that we spend on wasted fidget spinners and
(24:23):
movies compared to the science budget of this country, it's
embarrassing and um, probably equally mind blowing. Well, this thing
originally was going to cost about five million bucks. That's
when they started planning it in But by two thousand
and six the budget had exploded to four and a
half billion dollars, and now the total budget is just
(24:45):
just shy of ten billion dollars. That's quite the accounting
call they probably had to have to figure out these numbers.
But um, but probably worth it, I'm sure. I mean
nine billion, that's like the cost of one jet airplane, right, Yeah,
it's totally worth it. For secrets of the universe, for
things that nobody has ever seen before. It's definitely gonna
(25:06):
be worth it. And you know, the day that they launched,
the day that this thing unfold and turns on and
sends down the first pictures, that's going to be an
incredible moment in the history of you know, humanity. I
think it's gonna be an exciting day for astronomers. They
gonna gathered around the computer screen to see that first
picture So then let's talk about where they're gonna put this.
I mean, I know it's going to be out in space, um,
(25:27):
but space is pretty big. So Houses is going to
be in the same place where Hubble is. Like, it's
as it's gonna sit next to Hubble or is it
doing something totally different? Well, Hubble is in orbit around
the Earth. It's about three forty miles up. And that's
convenient because if you do need to send Comcast or
your cable guy up to fix it, then you can
get there. Right. We have space shuttles, and or we
(25:49):
had space shuttles, but now we have ways to get
up into orbit to fix this stuff. That works for Hubble,
but it doesn't work for the James Web Space Telescope
because it's a different kind of telescope and in the
to be blocked from the light of the Sun and
the Moon and the Earth constantly. Oh, I see, it
needs to get away from things that are reflecting or
are bright, right, And so they put it out in
(26:12):
this point. It's called a lagrange point. There's several places
around a large body where you can orbit in this
sort of stationary location. They're called lagrange points, and there's
one is called the second Lagrange point. And basically, you
take the Sun, you draw a line from the Sun
to the Earth, and then you keep going and there's
a point there where you can stay in stable orbit
around the Sun and the Earth. And the cool thing
(26:34):
there is that you keep the same relationship with the
Sun and the Earth at all times, so you can
keep sort of all these objects that are too bright
behind your sun shield. Oh, I see, it's like you
don't um need to be spinning around the object to
stay in orbit because you're sort of far enough away
where the gravity is weaker. Yeah, it's's there's a stable
(26:55):
little spot there where you can hang out. So you
move around the Sun, sort of following the Earth in
the same angle with respect to the Sun as the
Earth does at all times. And that way you can
sort of put your back towards the Earth and also
the Sun. And so this thing needs to manage, and
it has this one sun shield right has to block
the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon at all times,
(27:15):
and so it keeps all those things sort of behind
it by being a little bit out further than the Earth.
So it's gonna be like almost a million miles away
from the Earth a million miles a million miles, which
means repair will be essentially impossible. Wow, can you send
robots to try to fix it or clean the lens?
You probably could, but they will probably cost a billion dollars.
(27:37):
We don't have like, you know, standard robots roaming the
Solar system to fix stuff. We used to it all
to make the telescope. We forgot to leave a little
bit for the room, but needed to clean it up.
Or maybe the next time, you know, we're sending our
cable repair guys out to Mars, they can just sort
of stop off at the James Web telescope and fix it.
Or that's that's probably the next sequel, you know, to
(27:57):
make it a trilogy. The next Space is going to
rescue the second space perhaps, or maybe it'll just work fine.
Maybe the sun shield will unfold and the telescope will
unfold and will open up and just give us beautiful
pictures from day one. Let's be optimistic. And so then
as it as the Earth goes around the Sun, this
(28:19):
telescope is going to kind of maintain that the Earth
and the Sun behind it, right like it's going to
rotate also kind of like a giant clock precisely. You
draw that line from the Sun to the Earth and
you extend it through the Earth, it'll hit the James
Web space telescope. It should be fixed always. Yeah, yeah,
that's pretty interesting. If you want to keep it cool
(28:41):
and you want to see into the infrared, and you
want to see deep, deep into the universe. It really
is the best place to put a space telescope. Oh,
I see it sits in the shadow that the Earth
makes from the Sun. Well, the right is also bright. Yeah,
but it will see a constant eclipse. The Earth will
be constantly in front of the Sun, and so that
helps block it. But also it has its own son
(29:03):
shield right that it keeps the Earth, the Moon, and
the Sun all behind it at all times. Oh man,
is it going to take a selfie? That would be
pretty cool, Like if it takes a picture backwards and
it's like to get the Earth eclipsing the Sun. That
that was I hope, I hope they're putting in a
backwards facing camera. They're just for that selfie. I just
want that selfie. You know. We don't build space telescopes
(29:25):
for selfies. We build them to look out into the
universe and see other stuff. I think there's already billions
of selfies being taken on Earth at any moment. I see,
I see. We should just call him spaces. Let's write
a proposal to NASA for the Jorge him space telescope selfie.
Everyone on Earth take a duck face at the same
time at the count of three. That's worth ten billion
dollars for sure, I think everyone. I think, I'm sure
(29:49):
everyone on Earth would pay a dollar to get that
selfie sst selfie Space telescope a dollar. Let's see, Let's
do a fundraiser. Let's see how far we it. I'll
start the Indiego go right right now, we can show
people how easy it is to raise money for science
when you're doing something ridiculous. All right, well, let's get
(30:11):
now into what it's going to tell us about the universe.
What is this new lens into the cosmos going to
reveal that we haven't seen before in this new sequel.
But first, let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel,
(30:38):
this James Webb space telescope that's new is going to
open up our eyes to new things in the universe. Right,
It's it's going to let us see further A rudder
and cooler. So what are some of the things we
can expect to tell us. Well, like in any sequel,
it's gonna hit the best points of the previous one, right,
it's gonna double down and all the good stuff I see.
(31:01):
And so we're gonna see further away, which means we
might be able to see like the first stars that
formed in the universe, which are invisible to bubble because
they're so red shifted. We might see the first galaxies formed,
and we might really get to see what it's like
on another planet. What all right, let's bring it down
that there was a lot of cool stuff there. Um,
(31:22):
So what do you mean the first stars, Like, we're
gonna see them be born or we're going to see
them you know, still sort of burning in the universe
historical sense, Yeah, we're gonna look back in time and
see the first stars that formed in the universe. Remember
the universe began, and then we had a lot of
hydrogen gas and a little bit helium. And these days
(31:45):
stars have more heavy stuff in them because there's been
stars around to burn and diffuse and to create carbon
and iron and that stuff. But back in the early days,
we had the first stars forming just out of that
raw gas from the Big Bang, and we think we
know what those stars might have looked like. We think
they're probably all much much bigger than the sun, and
they burned out in just a few million years or
(32:06):
tens of millions of years. But we don't really know
what did star formation look like when there had never
been a star, And so that's something we'd like to see.
And right now that light is hitting us, but it's
too red shifted and too faint for us to see it.
So we just need to turn this eyeball on so
we can see what those stars look like. Oh I see,
So I mean these stars aren't by now long gone
(32:29):
like right now in this instant there, they're they were
gone a long time ago, but the ones that were
really really far away, we might still be able to
see them because it took so long for the light
to get here. That's right. We have this amazing feature
that we can look backwards in time by looking further
away because light takes so long to get here. So
something really interesting that happened a long long time ago,
(32:51):
fourteen billion light years or so, he's just now getting
here on Earth. So we're looking to get to the
furthest shell, right, But it has to be. It has
to be. The stars are formed at the very edge
of the universe. The stars have formed really far from here.
We don't know if there is an edge to the
universe or what's going on over there. But you're right,
we can't see things that happened a long time ago
(33:11):
close by. That light is now left and it's is
being observed by aliens somewhere on another planet. But the
light that was created from these first stars fourteen billion
years ago is still flying through the universe. If it's
if it came from really really far away and it's
just now getting to the Earth. Wow, And these first
stars are different than the ones we see now? Are
(33:32):
they interesting and different? Well, the stars that we see
now have all sorts of mix of gases in them
because their formed from the leftovers of other stars that
have died. So remember, the universe is many cycles of
star life and death. In the first stars formed, they
clumped together this gas and burned and created heavier elements
like helium and beryllium and lithium and oxygen, and then
(33:54):
then they blew up, and then more stars formed from
the remnants from the sharks of those ours, and they
could burn even hotter because they're more massive and they
have heavier stuff in them, and eventually you get heavier
and heavier and stuff, and that's how you make you know,
iron and all the stuff that makes us up. But
were many cycles in, so we want to see the
first cycle. We want to see how this whole series
(34:14):
got started, right, We want to see the O G stars. Yeah,
and you know, star formation seems sort of basic. It's like, well,
gas clumps together and you get stars, but it's actually
really complicated and we still don't understand it. For example,
we look out at galaxies all around us, and we
see that some of them are still making new stars,
other ones are not. Some galaxies seem like dead, and
(34:36):
we don't understand the difference. We don't understand why some
galaxies keep making stars and other ones don't. So we'd
have to go back to the very beginning and see
the original stars and see what started it all. Pretty
cool and so well, you said, we will also get
to see some of the first galaxies. What do you mean,
have there been second galaxies since? Yeah? In exactly the
same way that we don't really understand how stars formed
(34:58):
in the first moments. We also don't really understand what
the first galaxies looked like. Now, our galaxy is the
ones that you're familiar with, Like the Milky Way has
a bar in the middle and then these lines swirling around.
It is a spiral galaxy, right, it looks like a swirl,
looks like a swirl. But the older galaxies that would
look at if we look really far back in time,
(35:19):
not as far back as James Webbill tell us, the
galaxies don't look like that. They're sort of just like
little clumps, are more like blobs, and they don't have
these swirl shapes. And we don't really understand how did
you get from the blobs to the swirls Where all
the galaxies back then blobs and then the galaxies we
have now are like combinations of galaxies where they've merged
together through collisions and formed these super galaxies which then
(35:40):
becomes swirls or is there a different process? Interesting because
so before they so you're saying, before galaxies look different
than they are and and we kind of don't know
how to make that connection. Yeah, we don't know how
they started. And most interestingly, we don't know the role
that black holes played, Like we think that there's a
black hole the center of a galaxy, like there is
(36:01):
one the center of the Milky Way, but we don't
know what the cause and effect is, Like does every
galaxy eventually form a black hole because you get so
much stuff in the middle, or do galaxies form around
black holes? Like do black holes cause galaxies or the
other way around. So we'd like to go back to
the original galaxies and see are these the first black
holes formed in the universe. It's the old you know,
(36:24):
chicken and the black hole problem, which one came first?
I don't think I've ever seen a chicken lay a
black hole, but i'd like to. Yeah, maybe with this
new telescope. Who knows, right the possibilities are in add
that to the list of science missions for the James
Webb Telescope. So that's when I want to see in
a sequel. That's definitely that's prequel territory. But you know,
(36:47):
I think there's there's something here that I want people
to understand, which is that seeing the first thing, seeing
the origins of stuff really gives you a sense for
like why something is. You know, it could have been
that the universe didn't have galaxies that it's just a
bunch of stars distributed through space. Why do we have
galaxies at all? What made that happen? And why our
galaxies the size they are not ten jillion times bigger
(37:09):
or much much smaller. And I think the clues to
those big questions about like the nature of space that's
out there lies in the origins of galaxy formation, which
we will get to watch. Wow. Yeah, it sounds like
this telescope is not just gonna let us travel further
out into the universe or see with more clarity, but
it's actually like kind of like a time machine, you know,
(37:30):
like you can go back in time further and see
closer to the origin and birth of the universe precisely.
And when you want to understand how why things are
the way they are, you got to go back to
the beginning, and this is going to take us back there.
You're exactly right, it's like a time machine. It's gonna
let us see light from the very first moments that
there was even light in the universe, because you know,
(37:53):
the universe had these dark ages after all this stuff
was created, It was just sort of dark for a
while before the first stars formed, So we're gonna it
to see the first light that was generated from stars. Interesting,
and then somebody said, let there be light. Is that
what you're saying, Daniel? That sounds like something from our
writer's room. Man, all right? And then you said one
(38:13):
last thing that was pretty mind blowing to me is
that this new telescope might let us actually kind of
find out if there's life out there in the universe. Yeah,
we have these amazing telescopes now that can help us
find other planets like Kepler and tests. These are designed
to see that there are other planets there around other stars.
And in the last five, ten twenty years that field
(38:35):
is exploded, we found now thousands of stars that have
planets around them. Problem with those telescopes is they're really
good at seeing that the planet is there, but they're
not good at studying the planet. They're like more about breath.
You know, they can find the stuff, but once they
find it, they can't like zoom in on it very well.
Whereas James Webb is great at zooming in on stuff
(38:57):
cool because it has kind of a it's a more
powerful full who lends right, like it's bigger and so
you can with better focus, and so you might actually,
you know better, peer into these distant planets, right and
maybe make out things that would tell you if there
is life out there exactly. Just like if you're searching
a beach for I know, somebody's lost wedding ring or something.
(39:18):
You can use a metal detector to tell if something
is there. But when you hear a signal, you want
to dig down and look ut the magnifying glass from
microscope and see what you found. You want to zoom
in and gory detail. So James Webb what he can do.
It's not great. It's finding that there are planets there, right.
You wouldn't want to search a beach with a magnifying glass.
That's what essentially would be like looking for exoplanets with
(39:38):
James Webb. But once you found one, then you point
your super hubble at it, you point James Webb at it,
and you can study the atmosphere of these planets. If
they're close enough, it might even give us pictures of
the planets themselves. Wow, it would be like the ultimate
paparazzi tool. Yeah, we can spy on what's going on
in those planets. Uh, what if you turn it around
(40:01):
and spun and pointed at at Earth then and what
could we see. We can see vain cartoonists making a
duck face. There you go. That's that's that's worth ten
billion dollars right there. And they have this really cool
instrument on it. The problem, of course, when you point
a telescope at a planet that's really far away is
that it's also next to a star, and that star
(40:22):
sort of drowns it out. And so to keep your
instrument from getting like swamped by the star, they have
this thing called a coronagraph which they used to basically
block the life from the star. They move it so
that it blocks the life from the star and you
can only see around the star the corona of the star.
People do this to study the corona of the sun,
block out the Sun. It has at like a little
(40:43):
dot in the middle. M m. It's a little the
middle to block out the life from the star, so
you could only see the stuff near it avoid your
instrument from getting like swamped and saturated from all the
light from that star. So we could that will help
us visualize these exoplanets, so it doesn't look like a J. J.
Abrams version of Star Wars sequel with all the lens
(41:04):
flares exactly, lens flares, not documentary lens flares, not real physics,
all right, And so to close out the episode, we
thought we'd have Alex tell us a little bit about
what we can expect from the James Webb Telescope. So
this telescope is the biggest telescope that we've ever built.
(41:24):
This is really meant to answer some of the big
questions like, you know, why where do we come from?
And are we alone? And the possibilities for what's out
there are tremendous, and so we're gonna see all the
way back, you know, into our deepest history, but then
all the way out to to you know, what could
(41:45):
be out there now. And you know, we're probably not
going to see another mission of this, of this magnitude
in my lifetime. Well, you can really hear the excitement
in the voice of these astronomers. You know, we are
building them where they're building a huge new toy, and
we're paying for it, but they get to see the light.
And so I'm excited for them, and I'm excited for
(42:05):
what humanity is gonna learn. I'm excited for what those
first stars and first galaxies are gonna look like and
I'm excited to see pictures of other planets. Yeah, that's definitely.
I think a sequel that will get me to pay
for another movie ticket ticket. I think joking aside, I
would definitely pay more taxes if it meant we've got
to build more awesome space telescopes. You know, Daniel, you
(42:27):
can't pay more taxes if you wanted to know. But
I can't fund the space telescope with my income. Everybody's
got to pay more taxes to make that happen. All right, Well,
hopefully this will get more people excited about it, and
so when the trailer drops, people will um share it
and be even more excited. And so stay tuned. It's
coming out in a couple of years, and hopefully it
(42:48):
will tell us all about where we came from. I'm excited.
I hope you're excited, and we'll look forward to unpacking
the discoveries of the James Web space telescopes sometime in
late you one, Well, thanks for listening, see you next time.
(43:10):
Before you still have a question after listening to all
these explanations, please drop us the line we'd love to
hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio from
(43:32):
More podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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