Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What will the new space telescope reveal?

Transcript

What will the new space telescope reveal? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how do you feel about sequels? Well, in general,
0:12
Speaker 1: they tend to be sort of bigger, more expensive, and
0:15
Speaker 1: early on schedule. I think bigger and more expensive is
0:18
Speaker 1: the whole point of sequels. Well, can you imagine what
0:21
Speaker 1: you liked? My favorite sequel is called the PhD Movie Too,
0:25
Speaker 1: totally unbiased opinion, totally unbiased. I wrote and produced it,
0:29
Speaker 1: but I think it was good. Yeah. Well when I
0:33
Speaker 1: when we made it, I took inspiration from like, you know,
0:36
Speaker 1: The Empire Strikes Back and you know The Matrix Too.
0:40
Speaker 1: I think those are all movies that did pretty well
0:42
Speaker 1: on the sequels. Oh, I see you meant movie sequels. Yes,
0:47
Speaker 1: what kind of sequels did you think I was talking about? Hey,
0:49
Speaker 1: it's the podcast, So I was thinking science experiment sequels
0:53
Speaker 1: of course, Indiana Jones and the Thesis of Dude, Rise
0:57
Speaker 1: of the Protons. Hi. I'm or Having, a cartoonist and
1:17
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:20
Speaker 1: particle physicist, and I actually am a fan of movie sequels.
1:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:27
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio. I think this is
1:30
Speaker 1: our episode number a hundred or so I think we're
1:33
Speaker 1: like twenty, so I don't even know if it counts
1:35
Speaker 1: as a sequel anymore. What would that be called. I
1:37
Speaker 1: think it's called episode A hundred and twenty, and it's
1:42
Speaker 1: got to be a Latin name for it or something
1:43
Speaker 1: like de sentiqual. Well, I think we probably are going
1:48
Speaker 1: to peek out around two hundreds, So if people can
1:50
Speaker 1: just hang on and wait for that one, maybe we'll
1:53
Speaker 1: come out before Avengers. We are slowly building the dramatic tension,
1:59
Speaker 1: So welcome to five guys. It's about the universe and
2:01
Speaker 1: all the amazing and beautiful and mind blowing things to
2:06
Speaker 1: see out there in the far reaches of the cosmos.
2:09
Speaker 1: It's about all the things that you want to understand,
2:12
Speaker 1: all the things that you want to see about the universe,
2:15
Speaker 1: all the things that you'd like us to explain to you.
2:18
Speaker 1: So that's our job here today is to take you
2:20
Speaker 1: on a tour of the cosmos, help you visualize and
2:22
Speaker 1: help you really understand the universe that we find ourselves in. Yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: and sometimes we don't just talk about the things that
2:29
Speaker 1: are out there or that might be out there in
2:32
Speaker 1: the universe, but we also kind of like to talk
2:34
Speaker 1: about how we see these things out there and how
2:37
Speaker 1: we know that they're there, and how can we know
2:40
Speaker 1: more about them? That's right. One important role of science
2:43
Speaker 1: is to develop new eyes into the universe, new ways
2:47
Speaker 1: to look out there and discover crazy, mind blowing stuff
2:50
Speaker 1: that informs our understanding of how everything works. And so
2:53
Speaker 1: we talk sometimes about how particle accelerators give us a
2:56
Speaker 1: new vision of the very small, or if we look
2:59
Speaker 1: at a strophysical new trinos, we can see the universe
3:02
Speaker 1: in a different way. And so every time we build
3:04
Speaker 1: a new telescope or a new device or new something,
3:07
Speaker 1: it's like we're opening a new kind of eyeball. Yeah,
3:10
Speaker 1: because there is a lot out there for us to
3:13
Speaker 1: see and discover, and it's pretty amazing that we can
3:16
Speaker 1: see a lot of it from our little you know,
3:18
Speaker 1: spherical rock here floating in the middle space, in a
3:22
Speaker 1: corner of the galaxy, in the in the little corridor
3:26
Speaker 1: of the universe, and almost spherical rock, remember our podcast,
3:29
Speaker 1: that's right, almost spherical Yeah. But it is incredible that
3:32
Speaker 1: we can learn anything, you know, that without going anywhere,
3:35
Speaker 1: we can learn so much about this vast cosmos just
3:38
Speaker 1: by sitting on our little home and that relies on
3:40
Speaker 1: us gathering all this information. And if you think about
3:43
Speaker 1: it from the other perspective, there's so much information about
3:47
Speaker 1: the universe just washing over us right now. You know,
3:51
Speaker 1: we know about light, and we know about neutrinos and
3:53
Speaker 1: all sorts of other particles. But we think that there
3:56
Speaker 1: are other kinds of matter washing over us that are
3:59
Speaker 1: still in this sable, and there might be yet new
4:02
Speaker 1: forms of matter we haven't yet even imagined that contained
4:05
Speaker 1: incredible revelations about the universe. We haven't even figured out
4:09
Speaker 1: how to listen to that information yet, how to open
4:11
Speaker 1: up an eyeball that will let us see the universe
4:13
Speaker 1: in that way. Oh, man, Daniel, you just gave me
4:16
Speaker 1: galactic fomo like cosmic fear of missing out. What if
4:21
Speaker 1: there's something, you know, revelatory about the reality of the
4:25
Speaker 1: universe right now going through us, coming from space in
4:28
Speaker 1: the in the light flashing over is but nobody's looking
4:31
Speaker 1: What if almost certainly right, think about the history of science.
4:35
Speaker 1: You know, for millions and millions of years, light that
4:38
Speaker 1: contained information about the universe was hitting the Earth and
4:41
Speaker 1: there was nobody even looking up. And then for thousands
4:44
Speaker 1: of years we looked up, but we had no idea
4:46
Speaker 1: what that information contained. It's only the last few decades
4:49
Speaker 1: we're starting to get a clue for how much information
4:52
Speaker 1: there is. So I'm sure we've only begun to crack
4:54
Speaker 1: that nut. Man, what if we started looking out and
4:57
Speaker 1: we missed the first part the US movie and we
5:01
Speaker 1: just catch the sequel. I mean, how confusing would that be.
5:04
Speaker 1: We are looking at the universe sort of almost fourteen
5:06
Speaker 1: billion years after the story started, but fortunately the movie
5:11
Speaker 1: started also very far away, and so it's just getting
5:14
Speaker 1: here now. We can go back and watch the original prequels. Oh,
5:18
Speaker 1: I see, this is not like an episode fourteen billion
5:23
Speaker 1: in the movie of the Universe. No, episode fourteen billion
5:26
Speaker 1: is happening right here on Earth right now. But we
5:28
Speaker 1: hope that episode zero is still out there and that
5:31
Speaker 1: if we get in powerful enough telescope, we can see
5:34
Speaker 1: as it arrives on Earth because it took so long
5:37
Speaker 1: to get here. All right, So today we'll be talking
5:39
Speaker 1: about one such tool to look out into the universe.
5:42
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty exciting too. It's still under construction,
5:47
Speaker 1: but it's uh planned to be launched pretty soon, right
5:51
Speaker 1: in the next couple of years. Yeah, they actually finished
5:53
Speaker 1: building it a couple of years ago, but they're still
5:55
Speaker 1: sort of tweaking it and preparing it. It's a really
5:58
Speaker 1: complex device and then to really get it ready for launch.
6:01
Speaker 1: It's going to be a delicate thing when it finally
6:03
Speaker 1: goes up into space, and it's sort of the child
6:07
Speaker 1: or the successor to something that everybody is familiar with,
6:09
Speaker 1: one of the most famous experiments in astronomy. So today
6:13
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we will be asking the question what
6:20
Speaker 1: will the James Web space telescope tell us about the universe?
6:25
Speaker 1: And you might be familiar with space telescopes in general
6:28
Speaker 1: because of Hubble. Hubble, of course named after Edwin Hubble,
6:31
Speaker 1: who discovered that the universe was expanding, is provided these
6:35
Speaker 1: gorgeous pictures of the Cosmos had looked further and further
6:39
Speaker 1: out into the universe and anything before it. It's an
6:41
Speaker 1: incredible technological marvel. And now we're talking about basically Hubble
6:46
Speaker 1: two point oh, how about the next generation or if
6:49
Speaker 1: this was like horror movies, would be like son of Hubble,
6:54
Speaker 1: that hub will have a son. He might object to that.
6:56
Speaker 1: You know, well, Hubble's son was probably named Hubble actually
6:59
Speaker 1: just lives, so that would be Terrible Hubble, son of
7:02
Speaker 1: Hubble Hubble episode two. Yeah. The real name for it, though,
7:07
Speaker 1: is the James Webb Space Telescope, named after an administrator
7:11
Speaker 1: of NASA who had a big role in the Apollo program.
7:14
Speaker 1: And I hope that James Webb becomes as famous as Hubble,
7:17
Speaker 1: and hope that James Webb Space Telescope teaches us as
7:20
Speaker 1: much about the universe as the Hubble did. Yeah. So, actually,
7:24
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I brought up the PhD movie
7:26
Speaker 1: too in the opening of the episode is that that
7:29
Speaker 1: those were two movies, PhD Movie One and Tune, which
7:33
Speaker 1: that started real graduate students and real scientists and postdocs
7:37
Speaker 1: in the movie. And so it just so happened that
7:39
Speaker 1: one of the stars of the movies is now a
7:42
Speaker 1: scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope project. Her name
7:46
Speaker 1: is Alexander Lockwood, and she's awesome. She has a PhD
7:49
Speaker 1: in astronomy from cal Tech and she works on it
7:52
Speaker 1: right now. And so I went on and I asked
7:54
Speaker 1: her what she thought is exciting and knew about this
7:59
Speaker 1: new telescope. Yeah, so I called her out since we
8:02
Speaker 1: were I knew we were talking about this space Telescope,
8:04
Speaker 1: and I asked her to tell us a little bit
8:06
Speaker 1: about what this space telescope is and how it's different
8:10
Speaker 1: than the Hubble Telescope. So here's what you had to say.
8:13
Speaker 1: The James Web Space Telescope is NASA's next huge mission.
8:20
Speaker 1: It is going to tell us new things about all
8:23
Speaker 1: aspects of the universe, from planets to galaxies to the
8:26
Speaker 1: very beginning of what we know in the universe. It
8:29
Speaker 1: still works like Hubble does, like a giant telescope in space,
8:31
Speaker 1: but it's seven times bigger, and it's going to see
8:35
Speaker 1: back even further and even deeper into all sorts of things.
8:38
Speaker 1: So it's it's basically Hubble on steroids. It's not replacing Hubble,
8:42
Speaker 1: because Hubble's still up there and working. But they're gonna
8:44
Speaker 1: work side by side and tell us things you know
8:47
Speaker 1: that we can't even imagine. All Right, it's an ambitious sequel.
8:51
Speaker 1: The thing is what he's saying. You know it's been
8:53
Speaker 1: working out, you know it's ripped. They didn't just try
8:58
Speaker 1: to do the same thing as if first one. They're
9:00
Speaker 1: really trying to upgrade it and let us see further
9:04
Speaker 1: into the universe and try to answer some of the
9:08
Speaker 1: new and bigger questions we have in astronomy, right, Yeah,
9:11
Speaker 1: And you don't get to build one of these things
9:13
Speaker 1: very often, and so when you do, you have to
9:14
Speaker 1: balance being really ambitious about developing new technologies that are
9:18
Speaker 1: going to give you incredible new information about the universe
9:22
Speaker 1: with actually making the thing work. And so they always
9:26
Speaker 1: want to push the boundaries a little bit. But then
9:27
Speaker 1: again you also actually want to get the thing funded
9:30
Speaker 1: and up into space. And so here they've tried to
9:33
Speaker 1: go way beyond what they did with Hubble. They try
9:36
Speaker 1: to do something much more impressive and much more powerful
9:39
Speaker 1: because Hubble still working, right, You don't just want another Hubble,
9:41
Speaker 1: You want something better than Hubble. You don't want a
9:44
Speaker 1: double Hubble. I take ten Hubbles. But you know, if
9:48
Speaker 1: you're gonna launch something, you want something that's a super Hubble.
9:51
Speaker 1: All right, So, so what does steroids and physics look like?
9:55
Speaker 1: It sounds like that he said that it's on It's
9:58
Speaker 1: like the old one, but on steroid. So I'm wondering,
10:00
Speaker 1: first of all, is it legal? Is it allowed in
10:02
Speaker 1: the international community? And second of all, what is a
10:06
Speaker 1: physics steroid do? I think it's a pretty good analogy
10:09
Speaker 1: because the physics steroid just makes you bigger. And being bigger,
10:13
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in detail in a moment, is
10:15
Speaker 1: really important for telescopes because it means you can gather
10:18
Speaker 1: more light, and more light you can gather the more
10:21
Speaker 1: distant objects you can see. So being bigger really is better.
10:25
Speaker 1: And when it comes to telescopes, all right, Well, we
10:27
Speaker 1: were wondering, as usual, how many people out there had
10:29
Speaker 1: heard of the James Webb Space Telescope and whether they
10:33
Speaker 1: knew what we could possibly learn from it. So it's
10:36
Speaker 1: usual Daniel went out there into the streets of uc
10:40
Speaker 1: Irvine and ask people out there if they knew what
10:43
Speaker 1: the James Webb Space Telescope is and what we could
10:47
Speaker 1: learn from it. Here's what people had to say. Well,
10:50
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
10:54
Speaker 1: My guess would be to get tighter constraints on the
10:59
Speaker 1: age of the universe. Again, I don't know what it's doing. Um,
11:03
Speaker 1: one of the things that we need to know. UM,
11:06
Speaker 1: you know, we could get tighter constraints one lifetime with
11:09
Speaker 1: dark matter. UM, maybe on proton decay things like that.
11:14
Speaker 1: I have not no, I've not I've not no I think, so, okay,
11:19
Speaker 1: do you know what it's going to teach us when
11:21
Speaker 1: you discovered using it? Is it the one that just
11:24
Speaker 1: recently went up to like replace a different telescope? Um,
11:28
Speaker 1: I think it's okay for x SO planet something like that.
11:32
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, I've not no. The
11:36
Speaker 1: James Webbs is going to be the successor to the Hubble.
11:39
Speaker 1: It's going to be able to capture in red light
11:42
Speaker 1: all the way back to the beginning of the universe,
11:44
Speaker 1: where the light wasn't actually being recaptured and its immediate surroundings.
11:48
Speaker 1: All right, well, I guess it's not up there yet,
11:51
Speaker 1: so maybe that's why people haven't heard of it very much.
11:54
Speaker 1: I was sort of disappointed. I mean, Hubble is so famous.
11:57
Speaker 1: I figured that people must have heard of this, you device,
12:00
Speaker 1: It's been all the talk of astronomy for years and
12:03
Speaker 1: years and years, but almost nobody had heard of it.
12:06
Speaker 1: Not even the guy wearing a NASA T shirt knew
12:08
Speaker 1: what I was talking about. Oh, he was just wearing
12:10
Speaker 1: it for the ironic value. Probably. I thought you were
12:14
Speaker 1: going to say, because it's so cool and sexy. Is
12:16
Speaker 1: that what you're gonna say? Ironically? Yes, that's what I meant. Yes,
12:20
Speaker 1: So it seems like people out there aren't aware of
12:22
Speaker 1: what the James Web space telescope. We'll teach us about
12:25
Speaker 1: the universe and our origins and all sorts of crazy stuff.
12:28
Speaker 1: So it's good that we're going to dig into it
12:30
Speaker 1: today on the podcast. People at least a dozen people
12:33
Speaker 1: will now know what it is after this podcast, me
12:36
Speaker 1: you and the tend people I interviewed. Is that what
12:38
Speaker 1: you mean? You're forgetting our editor also, no, I'm just kidding.
12:42
Speaker 1: We know there are thousands of people out there listening,
12:44
Speaker 1: and so we are very happy to tell people about
12:47
Speaker 1: this great and interesting new tool. We have to extend signs.
12:51
Speaker 1: All right, so let's jump into it, Daniel, what is
12:53
Speaker 1: I guess? First of all, let's maybe take a step
12:56
Speaker 1: back and just talk about what a space telescope is.
12:59
Speaker 1: I mean, is at a telescope to look at space
13:01
Speaker 1: or is it actually like made out of space or
13:04
Speaker 1: does it take up a lot of space? What? What
13:05
Speaker 1: does space telescope? A space telescope is a telescope that
13:10
Speaker 1: is in space. Now, all these telescopes, of course look
13:13
Speaker 1: at space, but if you're on the ground, you have
13:15
Speaker 1: to look at space through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere
13:19
Speaker 1: looks nice and clear, but you know it's not totally clear,
13:22
Speaker 1: and it's wally. When it gets hot, it shakes, and
13:25
Speaker 1: so photons have traveled for billions and billions of miles
13:28
Speaker 1: to get here on Earth. For us to learn some
13:30
Speaker 1: secrets of the universe, you don't want to bend and
13:33
Speaker 1: twist and blur them just before they get to your telescope.
13:37
Speaker 1: So if you put a telescope up in space, you
13:39
Speaker 1: get to skip that last little fuzzy bit from the atmosphere,
13:42
Speaker 1: all right, because at the atmosphere blocks some of the
13:45
Speaker 1: light coming from space, and it also distorts it, right, Yeah,
13:49
Speaker 1: it blocks some of the light, specifically the light that's
13:51
Speaker 1: longer wavelength, and we can see what we call infrared.
13:54
Speaker 1: That light is especially absorbed by the atmosphere, and that
13:58
Speaker 1: light is really powerful because it's not absorbed by cosmic dust,
14:02
Speaker 1: so it travels much more easily through the whole universe
14:05
Speaker 1: until it gets here, and then it's basically blocked by
14:08
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. But on top of that, as you said,
14:10
Speaker 1: the atmosphere wiggles, and so you have to un somehow
14:13
Speaker 1: undo that wiggle if you want to really crystal clear
14:16
Speaker 1: picture of space. The other thing is that there aren't
14:18
Speaker 1: clouds in space. You could build an awesome telescope here
14:21
Speaker 1: on the ground and then apply for time and finally
14:24
Speaker 1: get like ten hours in the telescope, and then it's
14:26
Speaker 1: just cloudy that day and you just can't see anything.
14:29
Speaker 1: Oh man, I was just about to copyright the term
14:32
Speaker 1: space cloud. But you're telling me that there's no such thing. Well,
14:35
Speaker 1: there's weather in space, as we talked about, but there
14:38
Speaker 1: aren't clouds, and so the really the best place to
14:41
Speaker 1: observe is up in space. Now it comes with some downsides,
14:44
Speaker 1: of course, right. So then, so we have telescopes here
14:46
Speaker 1: on Earth and on mountains, but those are still under
14:49
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. And so the idea that um somebody had
14:52
Speaker 1: at some point was to put a telescope in space
14:55
Speaker 1: and then take pictures of the universe that way. That's right,
14:58
Speaker 1: it's uninterrupted, you can keep the Earth behind you, you
15:02
Speaker 1: don't have the atmosphere. You're open to different kinds of light.
15:05
Speaker 1: Of course, the disadvantage is that it's a lot harder
15:07
Speaker 1: to repair. You remember when Hubble went up, there was
15:10
Speaker 1: like a fuzz on its mirror. Its billions of dollars
15:13
Speaker 1: telescope finally launched and they turned it on and the
15:15
Speaker 1: pictures were fuzzy, and they had to send astronauts to
15:18
Speaker 1: repair it. And if you ever wait to like get
15:20
Speaker 1: your cable repair, this takes even longer to get an
15:24
Speaker 1: astronaut to repair. Can I get an astronaut to repair
15:26
Speaker 1: my cable then also work? I think they're pretty qualified. Yeah,
15:31
Speaker 1: but it's pretty expensive. I don't know what the service
15:34
Speaker 1: plan is like. All right, So you put it out
15:35
Speaker 1: into space and it can look out and it's has
15:39
Speaker 1: a better view, but it's harder to maintain and fix
15:42
Speaker 1: and to control I imagine, right, it's pretty tricky, yeah,
15:46
Speaker 1: and it's complicated, and also you have to risk launching it.
15:49
Speaker 1: You put this thing, your baby that you worked on
15:51
Speaker 1: for ten or twenty years, that you've got billions of
15:53
Speaker 1: dollars of funding and hundreds of people have helped you build.
15:56
Speaker 1: You put it on a rocket and send it up
15:59
Speaker 1: into space. And some fraction of these rockets they just blow.
16:03
Speaker 1: So it could be the little baby blows up on
16:05
Speaker 1: the path. That's a space telescope and the Hubble space telescope,
16:09
Speaker 1: which maybe I think If you've been on the Internet
16:11
Speaker 1: for a while, you've probably most likely have seen images
16:14
Speaker 1: from the Hubble Space Telescope, which Louis launched in the
16:17
Speaker 1: nineties I think or eighties. Yeah, I think it started
16:20
Speaker 1: operations in the early two thousand's. Oh all right, I
16:26
Speaker 1: have to check that. Actually I'm not sure. Just record,
16:29
Speaker 1: just record all versions here, here's fifty versions every started
16:36
Speaker 1: in October seven, seven seven. That sounds very incredible. Yeah,
16:45
Speaker 1: Hubble has been around for a while, it's been providing
16:47
Speaker 1: us amazing pictures. But this telescope is going to be
16:50
Speaker 1: quite different from Hubble. I mean, they'll be in space still,
16:52
Speaker 1: but it's got some significant upgrades. All right, So this
16:55
Speaker 1: is the sequel to Hubble. Uh And so what are
16:58
Speaker 1: what's better, better, and bigger about it? Well, first of all,
17:01
Speaker 1: it's bigger. So Hubble had about four point five square
17:05
Speaker 1: meters of observing area and this one is going to
17:08
Speaker 1: have about twenty five. That means that it can gather
17:12
Speaker 1: five times as much light. And that's really critical because
17:16
Speaker 1: the reason we can see something that's far away is
17:18
Speaker 1: because we focus on it and gather light for a while.
17:21
Speaker 1: You need to get enough photons from those things before
17:24
Speaker 1: you can see them. It's like having a bigger catchers
17:26
Speaker 1: mit to catch light. You just get you're just you're
17:30
Speaker 1: getting more stuff precisely. Think about that object that's billions
17:33
Speaker 1: and billions of light years away. Where it is, it's
17:36
Speaker 1: super bright. But then the photons as they leave that thing,
17:39
Speaker 1: they spread out through the universe, so you've got fewer
17:41
Speaker 1: and fewer photons per area, per volume actually, and so
17:45
Speaker 1: when you get to Earth, you're getting a very small
17:47
Speaker 1: number of photons. So the larger your catcher's mitt and
17:50
Speaker 1: the longer you can point it there, the deeper in
17:52
Speaker 1: space and the further back in time you can see.
17:55
Speaker 1: So size is huge, literally, but this thing is so
17:59
Speaker 1: big that it doesn't fit into a rocket. So they
18:02
Speaker 1: had to design this really complex thing. It's made out
18:05
Speaker 1: of eighteen hexagonal mirrors that will unfold in space to
18:09
Speaker 1: make a big mirror. Wow, sounds tricky. It does sound tricky.
18:14
Speaker 1: When that thing goes up, those guys are going to
18:16
Speaker 1: be nervous. Well, we have high KI confidence in NASA,
18:21
Speaker 1: and and so you're saying it's gonna let us see
18:24
Speaker 1: further away. I guess you know, because the stuff that's
18:28
Speaker 1: further away is giving off less light that's getting to us.
18:32
Speaker 1: And so if we have a bigger lens, a bigger mirror,
18:35
Speaker 1: bigger catchures myth, we can see those really far away
18:39
Speaker 1: objects precisely. That's one way that it let us see
18:42
Speaker 1: deeper into the universe. And there's a second, totally separate
18:46
Speaker 1: way that will also help us see further into the universe,
18:48
Speaker 1: and that's that it can look at a different kind
18:50
Speaker 1: of light. Remember, the things that are far away are
18:53
Speaker 1: also moving away from us more quickly. There's this relationship
18:57
Speaker 1: between distance from us and speed, which something that's moving away,
19:01
Speaker 1: and the further something is away from us, the fastest
19:04
Speaker 1: moving away from us, which shifts the frequency of the light,
19:08
Speaker 1: and so they called this red shift. The further something
19:11
Speaker 1: is away from us, the fastest moving away from us,
19:13
Speaker 1: the more the wavelength of light is shifted towards the red. Right,
19:17
Speaker 1: like the whole signal of the light just becomes more red,
19:20
Speaker 1: that's right, And at some point it passes out of
19:23
Speaker 1: the band that Hubble can see images from the very
19:26
Speaker 1: first things in the universe, which were really far away
19:29
Speaker 1: at the time, and the images are just out getting here.
19:31
Speaker 1: They're getting here, but they're so infrared shifted that Hubble
19:35
Speaker 1: cannot see them. Oh wow, it's it's like you're blind
19:39
Speaker 1: to those things. Yeah, so we're opening up a new
19:41
Speaker 1: kind of eye. They can see light from those objects.
19:44
Speaker 1: Even if you pointed Hubble at one of these objects
19:46
Speaker 1: for a year and just focused on it and gathered
19:49
Speaker 1: all the light, Hubble still could not see it. It's
19:51
Speaker 1: just blind to it. So this is gonna be bigger,
19:54
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be able to see in the infrared
19:56
Speaker 1: where these really really distant objects are emitting. Wow, sound
20:00
Speaker 1: like a pretty good sequel. I would pay to see
20:02
Speaker 1: that movie. And it has some has some new features
20:06
Speaker 1: to let it do that. Because to see in the infrared,
20:09
Speaker 1: you have to stay very very cold, because infrared is
20:12
Speaker 1: basically the transmission of heat. So to be sensitive to
20:14
Speaker 1: infrared light, you have to have a really cold object,
20:17
Speaker 1: and that introduces another layer of complexity. Not only are
20:21
Speaker 1: you out in space, but you have to like cry
20:23
Speaker 1: oh cool the whole thing. Oh I see, because if
20:26
Speaker 1: you're if you're too warm, then your sensors can't pick
20:30
Speaker 1: up these warm signals. Is that what it is like
20:33
Speaker 1: it gets lost in the noise. Precisely, you have to
20:35
Speaker 1: be really cold to be sensitive to infrared signals. So
20:39
Speaker 1: they have to keep this thing less than fifty degrees kelvin.
20:42
Speaker 1: That's colder than it is in space, is it. No,
20:46
Speaker 1: it's pretty cold, and it's colder than the sort of
20:49
Speaker 1: atmosphere of spaces, you know, the cosmic microwave background radiation
20:52
Speaker 1: is like two point three degrees kelvin. But something that's
20:55
Speaker 1: sitting out in space that absorbs sunlight will get hotter
20:58
Speaker 1: than that. And so they had to build the shield
21:00
Speaker 1: for this thing. This thing is a huge telescope and
21:03
Speaker 1: it sits on top of a shield that's going to
21:05
Speaker 1: protect it from the sun. Interesting needs a paracel. Yeah,
21:09
Speaker 1: it's gonna sit in its own shadow for its entire life. Alright, cool, Well,
21:12
Speaker 1: I'll sign up to see that sequel. It sounds like
21:15
Speaker 1: it's gonna be bigger and redder. A should be the subtitle,
21:21
Speaker 1: Space Telescope to Redder, cooler, further, further, redder, fainter but cooler,
21:30
Speaker 1: but cooler. Here you go. All right, let's get into
21:34
Speaker 1: when this thing is actually gonna launch and what we
21:36
Speaker 1: can expect to tell us. But first let's take a
21:39
Speaker 1: quick break. Alright, we're talking about the new and upcoming
21:55
Speaker 1: James Web Space Telescope, and we it's we know it's
21:59
Speaker 1: gonna be bigger, and it's going to be cooler technically
22:03
Speaker 1: and figuratively and literally, and it's going to be pretty
22:07
Speaker 1: cool in that it's going to let us see further
22:10
Speaker 1: away objects and older objects. So Daniel, when can when
22:15
Speaker 1: are they planning on launching this and when when will
22:17
Speaker 1: it be ready to take cool picks of the universe. Well,
22:21
Speaker 1: the official launch date is March, but that's sort of
22:25
Speaker 1: the official launch date today. There's been a lot of
22:28
Speaker 1: official launch dates. The original launch date was two thousand seven,
22:33
Speaker 1: but obviously we missed that one and so they had
22:36
Speaker 1: some trouble getting it ready or well, you know, this
22:39
Speaker 1: thing is doing something that nobody's ever done before, and
22:42
Speaker 1: when you develop these instruments that nobody's ever developed before,
22:46
Speaker 1: then sometimes you run into snags and you have to
22:48
Speaker 1: change plans. And so, like every big project, it's years
22:52
Speaker 1: behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. But we
22:56
Speaker 1: think it's going to launch. Yes, So there's been a
22:58
Speaker 1: few days in launching the Space the Scope, and so
23:01
Speaker 1: I was curious, so I asked Alex again how she
23:05
Speaker 1: felt about the new launch plan for Yeah, so we
23:10
Speaker 1: we recognize that it has been delayed, but it it
23:13
Speaker 1: is full of things that have literally never been done before. Like,
23:17
Speaker 1: not only is the science going to be great, but
23:19
Speaker 1: in order to do that, the things that people have
23:21
Speaker 1: made just to make this work, which include this giant
23:25
Speaker 1: eighteen section segmented me or the biggest thing we've ever
23:29
Speaker 1: sent into space, and to do all that, the technology
23:32
Speaker 1: that we needed is incredibly incredibly technical. Um and so yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: it's taken longer than we need than we thought it would,
23:41
Speaker 1: but that's because it is so profoundly innovative, and the
23:45
Speaker 1: science is going to be amazing because we thought of
23:48
Speaker 1: all these new things to make it happen. I am
23:51
Speaker 1: very confident that it's going to launch, all right, So
23:54
Speaker 1: that's pretty soon March. I mean that's uh, probably sooner
23:59
Speaker 1: than next Adventures equel, I think, And hopefully it'll last longer. Yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: and hopefully. But I hear it's going to cost about
24:06
Speaker 1: the same as this telescope a few billion dollars or
24:09
Speaker 1: make up a few billion. We should just make the profits,
24:12
Speaker 1: take the profits from adventures and put it to space astronomy.
24:16
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I've been saying that forever. The amount
24:19
Speaker 1: of money that we spend on wasted fidget spinners and
24:23
Speaker 1: movies compared to the science budget of this country, it's
24:26
Speaker 1: embarrassing and um, probably equally mind blowing. Well, this thing
24:31
Speaker 1: originally was going to cost about five million bucks. That's
24:34
Speaker 1: when they started planning it in But by two thousand
24:38
Speaker 1: and six the budget had exploded to four and a
24:40
Speaker 1: half billion dollars, and now the total budget is just
24:45
Speaker 1: just shy of ten billion dollars. That's quite the accounting
24:48
Speaker 1: call they probably had to have to figure out these numbers.
24:53
Speaker 1: But um, but probably worth it, I'm sure. I mean
24:56
Speaker 1: nine billion, that's like the cost of one jet airplane, right, Yeah,
25:00
Speaker 1: it's totally worth it. For secrets of the universe, for
25:03
Speaker 1: things that nobody has ever seen before. It's definitely gonna
25:06
Speaker 1: be worth it. And you know, the day that they launched,
25:08
Speaker 1: the day that this thing unfold and turns on and
25:11
Speaker 1: sends down the first pictures, that's going to be an
25:14
Speaker 1: incredible moment in the history of you know, humanity. I
25:17
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be an exciting day for astronomers. They
25:19
Speaker 1: gonna gathered around the computer screen to see that first
25:21
Speaker 1: picture So then let's talk about where they're gonna put this.
25:24
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's going to be out in space, um,
25:27
Speaker 1: but space is pretty big. So Houses is going to
25:31
Speaker 1: be in the same place where Hubble is. Like, it's
25:33
Speaker 1: as it's gonna sit next to Hubble or is it
25:35
Speaker 1: doing something totally different? Well, Hubble is in orbit around
25:39
Speaker 1: the Earth. It's about three forty miles up. And that's
25:42
Speaker 1: convenient because if you do need to send Comcast or
25:45
Speaker 1: your cable guy up to fix it, then you can
25:47
Speaker 1: get there. Right. We have space shuttles, and or we
25:49
Speaker 1: had space shuttles, but now we have ways to get
25:51
Speaker 1: up into orbit to fix this stuff. That works for Hubble,
25:54
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work for the James Web Space Telescope
25:57
Speaker 1: because it's a different kind of telescope and in the
26:00
Speaker 1: to be blocked from the light of the Sun and
26:03
Speaker 1: the Moon and the Earth constantly. Oh, I see, it
26:06
Speaker 1: needs to get away from things that are reflecting or
26:09
Speaker 1: are bright, right, And so they put it out in
26:12
Speaker 1: this point. It's called a lagrange point. There's several places
26:15
Speaker 1: around a large body where you can orbit in this
26:17
Speaker 1: sort of stationary location. They're called lagrange points, and there's
26:21
Speaker 1: one is called the second Lagrange point. And basically, you
26:23
Speaker 1: take the Sun, you draw a line from the Sun
26:26
Speaker 1: to the Earth, and then you keep going and there's
26:29
Speaker 1: a point there where you can stay in stable orbit
26:31
Speaker 1: around the Sun and the Earth. And the cool thing
26:34
Speaker 1: there is that you keep the same relationship with the
26:37
Speaker 1: Sun and the Earth at all times, so you can
26:39
Speaker 1: keep sort of all these objects that are too bright
26:41
Speaker 1: behind your sun shield. Oh, I see, it's like you
26:45
Speaker 1: don't um need to be spinning around the object to
26:48
Speaker 1: stay in orbit because you're sort of far enough away
26:52
Speaker 1: where the gravity is weaker. Yeah, it's's there's a stable
26:55
Speaker 1: little spot there where you can hang out. So you
26:57
Speaker 1: move around the Sun, sort of following the Earth in
27:01
Speaker 1: the same angle with respect to the Sun as the
27:03
Speaker 1: Earth does at all times. And that way you can
27:05
Speaker 1: sort of put your back towards the Earth and also
27:08
Speaker 1: the Sun. And so this thing needs to manage, and
27:11
Speaker 1: it has this one sun shield right has to block
27:13
Speaker 1: the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon at all times,
27:15
Speaker 1: and so it keeps all those things sort of behind
27:18
Speaker 1: it by being a little bit out further than the Earth.
27:21
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be like almost a million miles away
27:23
Speaker 1: from the Earth a million miles a million miles, which
27:27
Speaker 1: means repair will be essentially impossible. Wow, can you send
27:31
Speaker 1: robots to try to fix it or clean the lens?
27:35
Speaker 1: You probably could, but they will probably cost a billion dollars.
27:37
Speaker 1: We don't have like, you know, standard robots roaming the
27:40
Speaker 1: Solar system to fix stuff. We used to it all
27:43
Speaker 1: to make the telescope. We forgot to leave a little
27:46
Speaker 1: bit for the room, but needed to clean it up.
27:49
Speaker 1: Or maybe the next time, you know, we're sending our
27:50
Speaker 1: cable repair guys out to Mars, they can just sort
27:52
Speaker 1: of stop off at the James Web telescope and fix it.
27:55
Speaker 1: Or that's that's probably the next sequel, you know, to
27:57
Speaker 1: make it a trilogy. The next Space is going to
28:00
Speaker 1: rescue the second space perhaps, or maybe it'll just work fine.
28:06
Speaker 1: Maybe the sun shield will unfold and the telescope will
28:09
Speaker 1: unfold and will open up and just give us beautiful
28:11
Speaker 1: pictures from day one. Let's be optimistic. And so then
28:15
Speaker 1: as it as the Earth goes around the Sun, this
28:19
Speaker 1: telescope is going to kind of maintain that the Earth
28:23
Speaker 1: and the Sun behind it, right like it's going to
28:25
Speaker 1: rotate also kind of like a giant clock precisely. You
28:29
Speaker 1: draw that line from the Sun to the Earth and
28:30
Speaker 1: you extend it through the Earth, it'll hit the James
28:33
Speaker 1: Web space telescope. It should be fixed always. Yeah, yeah,
28:38
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting. If you want to keep it cool
28:41
Speaker 1: and you want to see into the infrared, and you
28:43
Speaker 1: want to see deep, deep into the universe. It really
28:45
Speaker 1: is the best place to put a space telescope. Oh,
28:48
Speaker 1: I see it sits in the shadow that the Earth
28:50
Speaker 1: makes from the Sun. Well, the right is also bright. Yeah,
28:55
Speaker 1: but it will see a constant eclipse. The Earth will
28:58
Speaker 1: be constantly in front of the Sun, and so that
29:00
Speaker 1: helps block it. But also it has its own son
29:03
Speaker 1: shield right that it keeps the Earth, the Moon, and
29:05
Speaker 1: the Sun all behind it at all times. Oh man,
29:09
Speaker 1: is it going to take a selfie? That would be
29:10
Speaker 1: pretty cool, Like if it takes a picture backwards and
29:13
Speaker 1: it's like to get the Earth eclipsing the Sun. That
29:16
Speaker 1: that was I hope, I hope they're putting in a
29:19
Speaker 1: backwards facing camera. They're just for that selfie. I just
29:22
Speaker 1: want that selfie. You know. We don't build space telescopes
29:25
Speaker 1: for selfies. We build them to look out into the
29:27
Speaker 1: universe and see other stuff. I think there's already billions
29:30
Speaker 1: of selfies being taken on Earth at any moment. I see,
29:33
Speaker 1: I see. We should just call him spaces. Let's write
29:36
Speaker 1: a proposal to NASA for the Jorge him space telescope selfie.
29:39
Speaker 1: Everyone on Earth take a duck face at the same
29:42
Speaker 1: time at the count of three. That's worth ten billion
29:45
Speaker 1: dollars for sure, I think everyone. I think, I'm sure
29:49
Speaker 1: everyone on Earth would pay a dollar to get that
29:51
Speaker 1: selfie sst selfie Space telescope a dollar. Let's see, Let's
29:58
Speaker 1: do a fundraiser. Let's see how far we it. I'll
30:03
Speaker 1: start the Indiego go right right now, we can show
30:06
Speaker 1: people how easy it is to raise money for science
30:08
Speaker 1: when you're doing something ridiculous. All right, well, let's get
30:11
Speaker 1: now into what it's going to tell us about the universe.
30:14
Speaker 1: What is this new lens into the cosmos going to
30:18
Speaker 1: reveal that we haven't seen before in this new sequel.
30:23
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel,
30:38
Speaker 1: this James Webb space telescope that's new is going to
30:42
Speaker 1: open up our eyes to new things in the universe. Right,
30:45
Speaker 1: It's it's going to let us see further A rudder
30:49
Speaker 1: and cooler. So what are some of the things we
30:51
Speaker 1: can expect to tell us. Well, like in any sequel,
30:55
Speaker 1: it's gonna hit the best points of the previous one, right,
30:57
Speaker 1: it's gonna double down and all the good stuff I see.
31:01
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna see further away, which means we
31:04
Speaker 1: might be able to see like the first stars that
31:06
Speaker 1: formed in the universe, which are invisible to bubble because
31:09
Speaker 1: they're so red shifted. We might see the first galaxies formed,
31:13
Speaker 1: and we might really get to see what it's like
31:16
Speaker 1: on another planet. What all right, let's bring it down
31:19
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of cool stuff there. Um,
31:22
Speaker 1: So what do you mean the first stars, Like, we're
31:23
Speaker 1: gonna see them be born or we're going to see
31:26
Speaker 1: them you know, still sort of burning in the universe
31:33
Speaker 1: historical sense, Yeah, we're gonna look back in time and
31:36
Speaker 1: see the first stars that formed in the universe. Remember
31:39
Speaker 1: the universe began, and then we had a lot of
31:41
Speaker 1: hydrogen gas and a little bit helium. And these days
31:45
Speaker 1: stars have more heavy stuff in them because there's been
31:47
Speaker 1: stars around to burn and diffuse and to create carbon
31:50
Speaker 1: and iron and that stuff. But back in the early days,
31:54
Speaker 1: we had the first stars forming just out of that
31:56
Speaker 1: raw gas from the Big Bang, and we think we
31:59
Speaker 1: know what those stars might have looked like. We think
32:01
Speaker 1: they're probably all much much bigger than the sun, and
32:04
Speaker 1: they burned out in just a few million years or
32:06
Speaker 1: tens of millions of years. But we don't really know
32:08
Speaker 1: what did star formation look like when there had never
32:11
Speaker 1: been a star, And so that's something we'd like to see.
32:14
Speaker 1: And right now that light is hitting us, but it's
32:17
Speaker 1: too red shifted and too faint for us to see it.
32:20
Speaker 1: So we just need to turn this eyeball on so
32:22
Speaker 1: we can see what those stars look like. Oh I see,
32:25
Speaker 1: So I mean these stars aren't by now long gone
32:29
Speaker 1: like right now in this instant there, they're they were
32:32
Speaker 1: gone a long time ago, but the ones that were
32:34
Speaker 1: really really far away, we might still be able to
32:37
Speaker 1: see them because it took so long for the light
32:39
Speaker 1: to get here. That's right. We have this amazing feature
32:42
Speaker 1: that we can look backwards in time by looking further
32:45
Speaker 1: away because light takes so long to get here. So
32:48
Speaker 1: something really interesting that happened a long long time ago,
32:51
Speaker 1: fourteen billion light years or so, he's just now getting
32:54
Speaker 1: here on Earth. So we're looking to get to the
32:56
Speaker 1: furthest shell, right, But it has to be. It has
32:59
Speaker 1: to be. The stars are formed at the very edge
33:02
Speaker 1: of the universe. The stars have formed really far from here.
33:05
Speaker 1: We don't know if there is an edge to the
33:06
Speaker 1: universe or what's going on over there. But you're right,
33:09
Speaker 1: we can't see things that happened a long time ago
33:11
Speaker 1: close by. That light is now left and it's is
33:14
Speaker 1: being observed by aliens somewhere on another planet. But the
33:18
Speaker 1: light that was created from these first stars fourteen billion
33:22
Speaker 1: years ago is still flying through the universe. If it's
33:25
Speaker 1: if it came from really really far away and it's
33:27
Speaker 1: just now getting to the Earth. Wow, And these first
33:30
Speaker 1: stars are different than the ones we see now? Are
33:32
Speaker 1: they interesting and different? Well, the stars that we see
33:35
Speaker 1: now have all sorts of mix of gases in them
33:37
Speaker 1: because their formed from the leftovers of other stars that
33:40
Speaker 1: have died. So remember, the universe is many cycles of
33:43
Speaker 1: star life and death. In the first stars formed, they
33:47
Speaker 1: clumped together this gas and burned and created heavier elements
33:50
Speaker 1: like helium and beryllium and lithium and oxygen, and then
33:54
Speaker 1: then they blew up, and then more stars formed from
33:57
Speaker 1: the remnants from the sharks of those ours, and they
34:00
Speaker 1: could burn even hotter because they're more massive and they
34:03
Speaker 1: have heavier stuff in them, and eventually you get heavier
34:05
Speaker 1: and heavier and stuff, and that's how you make you know,
34:07
Speaker 1: iron and all the stuff that makes us up. But
34:09
Speaker 1: were many cycles in, so we want to see the
34:12
Speaker 1: first cycle. We want to see how this whole series
34:14
Speaker 1: got started, right, We want to see the O G stars. Yeah,
34:18
Speaker 1: and you know, star formation seems sort of basic. It's like, well,
34:21
Speaker 1: gas clumps together and you get stars, but it's actually
34:24
Speaker 1: really complicated and we still don't understand it. For example,
34:28
Speaker 1: we look out at galaxies all around us, and we
34:30
Speaker 1: see that some of them are still making new stars,
34:33
Speaker 1: other ones are not. Some galaxies seem like dead, and
34:36
Speaker 1: we don't understand the difference. We don't understand why some
34:39
Speaker 1: galaxies keep making stars and other ones don't. So we'd
34:42
Speaker 1: have to go back to the very beginning and see
34:44
Speaker 1: the original stars and see what started it all. Pretty
34:47
Speaker 1: cool and so well, you said, we will also get
34:49
Speaker 1: to see some of the first galaxies. What do you mean,
34:52
Speaker 1: have there been second galaxies since? Yeah? In exactly the
34:56
Speaker 1: same way that we don't really understand how stars formed
34:58
Speaker 1: in the first moments. We also don't really understand what
35:01
Speaker 1: the first galaxies looked like. Now, our galaxy is the
35:04
Speaker 1: ones that you're familiar with, Like the Milky Way has
35:07
Speaker 1: a bar in the middle and then these lines swirling around.
35:10
Speaker 1: It is a spiral galaxy, right, it looks like a swirl,
35:14
Speaker 1: looks like a swirl. But the older galaxies that would
35:17
Speaker 1: look at if we look really far back in time,
35:19
Speaker 1: not as far back as James Webbill tell us, the
35:21
Speaker 1: galaxies don't look like that. They're sort of just like
35:23
Speaker 1: little clumps, are more like blobs, and they don't have
35:26
Speaker 1: these swirl shapes. And we don't really understand how did
35:28
Speaker 1: you get from the blobs to the swirls Where all
35:31
Speaker 1: the galaxies back then blobs and then the galaxies we
35:34
Speaker 1: have now are like combinations of galaxies where they've merged
35:37
Speaker 1: together through collisions and formed these super galaxies which then
35:40
Speaker 1: becomes swirls or is there a different process? Interesting because
35:44
Speaker 1: so before they so you're saying, before galaxies look different
35:48
Speaker 1: than they are and and we kind of don't know
35:50
Speaker 1: how to make that connection. Yeah, we don't know how
35:52
Speaker 1: they started. And most interestingly, we don't know the role
35:55
Speaker 1: that black holes played, Like we think that there's a
35:58
Speaker 1: black hole the center of a galaxy, like there is
36:01
Speaker 1: one the center of the Milky Way, but we don't
36:03
Speaker 1: know what the cause and effect is, Like does every
36:05
Speaker 1: galaxy eventually form a black hole because you get so
36:08
Speaker 1: much stuff in the middle, or do galaxies form around
36:12
Speaker 1: black holes? Like do black holes cause galaxies or the
36:15
Speaker 1: other way around. So we'd like to go back to
36:17
Speaker 1: the original galaxies and see are these the first black
36:20
Speaker 1: holes formed in the universe. It's the old you know,
36:24
Speaker 1: chicken and the black hole problem, which one came first?
36:28
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen a chicken lay a
36:30
Speaker 1: black hole, but i'd like to. Yeah, maybe with this
36:34
Speaker 1: new telescope. Who knows, right the possibilities are in add
36:37
Speaker 1: that to the list of science missions for the James
36:39
Speaker 1: Webb Telescope. So that's when I want to see in
36:41
Speaker 1: a sequel. That's definitely that's prequel territory. But you know,
36:47
Speaker 1: I think there's there's something here that I want people
36:49
Speaker 1: to understand, which is that seeing the first thing, seeing
36:52
Speaker 1: the origins of stuff really gives you a sense for
36:55
Speaker 1: like why something is. You know, it could have been
36:57
Speaker 1: that the universe didn't have galaxies that it's just a
37:00
Speaker 1: bunch of stars distributed through space. Why do we have
37:03
Speaker 1: galaxies at all? What made that happen? And why our
37:06
Speaker 1: galaxies the size they are not ten jillion times bigger
37:09
Speaker 1: or much much smaller. And I think the clues to
37:12
Speaker 1: those big questions about like the nature of space that's
37:15
Speaker 1: out there lies in the origins of galaxy formation, which
37:18
Speaker 1: we will get to watch. Wow. Yeah, it sounds like
37:21
Speaker 1: this telescope is not just gonna let us travel further
37:25
Speaker 1: out into the universe or see with more clarity, but
37:28
Speaker 1: it's actually like kind of like a time machine, you know,
37:30
Speaker 1: like you can go back in time further and see
37:34
Speaker 1: closer to the origin and birth of the universe precisely.
37:39
Speaker 1: And when you want to understand how why things are
37:41
Speaker 1: the way they are, you got to go back to
37:43
Speaker 1: the beginning, and this is going to take us back there.
37:45
Speaker 1: You're exactly right, it's like a time machine. It's gonna
37:47
Speaker 1: let us see light from the very first moments that
37:50
Speaker 1: there was even light in the universe, because you know,
37:53
Speaker 1: the universe had these dark ages after all this stuff
37:56
Speaker 1: was created, It was just sort of dark for a
37:57
Speaker 1: while before the first stars formed, So we're gonna it
38:00
Speaker 1: to see the first light that was generated from stars. Interesting,
38:04
Speaker 1: and then somebody said, let there be light. Is that
38:06
Speaker 1: what you're saying, Daniel? That sounds like something from our
38:09
Speaker 1: writer's room. Man, all right? And then you said one
38:13
Speaker 1: last thing that was pretty mind blowing to me is
38:15
Speaker 1: that this new telescope might let us actually kind of
38:19
Speaker 1: find out if there's life out there in the universe. Yeah,
38:22
Speaker 1: we have these amazing telescopes now that can help us
38:25
Speaker 1: find other planets like Kepler and tests. These are designed
38:29
Speaker 1: to see that there are other planets there around other stars.
38:33
Speaker 1: And in the last five, ten twenty years that field
38:35
Speaker 1: is exploded, we found now thousands of stars that have
38:39
Speaker 1: planets around them. Problem with those telescopes is they're really
38:43
Speaker 1: good at seeing that the planet is there, but they're
38:46
Speaker 1: not good at studying the planet. They're like more about breath.
38:49
Speaker 1: You know, they can find the stuff, but once they
38:51
Speaker 1: find it, they can't like zoom in on it very well.
38:54
Speaker 1: Whereas James Webb is great at zooming in on stuff
38:57
Speaker 1: cool because it has kind of a it's a more
38:59
Speaker 1: powerful full who lends right, like it's bigger and so
39:02
Speaker 1: you can with better focus, and so you might actually,
39:06
Speaker 1: you know better, peer into these distant planets, right and
39:09
Speaker 1: maybe make out things that would tell you if there
39:11
Speaker 1: is life out there exactly. Just like if you're searching
39:14
Speaker 1: a beach for I know, somebody's lost wedding ring or something.
39:18
Speaker 1: You can use a metal detector to tell if something
39:20
Speaker 1: is there. But when you hear a signal, you want
39:22
Speaker 1: to dig down and look ut the magnifying glass from
39:24
Speaker 1: microscope and see what you found. You want to zoom
39:26
Speaker 1: in and gory detail. So James Webb what he can do.
39:29
Speaker 1: It's not great. It's finding that there are planets there, right.
39:32
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to search a beach with a magnifying glass.
39:35
Speaker 1: That's what essentially would be like looking for exoplanets with
39:38
Speaker 1: James Webb. But once you found one, then you point
39:41
Speaker 1: your super hubble at it, you point James Webb at it,
39:44
Speaker 1: and you can study the atmosphere of these planets. If
39:47
Speaker 1: they're close enough, it might even give us pictures of
39:49
Speaker 1: the planets themselves. Wow, it would be like the ultimate
39:53
Speaker 1: paparazzi tool. Yeah, we can spy on what's going on
39:57
Speaker 1: in those planets. Uh, what if you turn it around
40:01
Speaker 1: and spun and pointed at at Earth then and what
40:03
Speaker 1: could we see. We can see vain cartoonists making a
40:07
Speaker 1: duck face. There you go. That's that's that's worth ten
40:11
Speaker 1: billion dollars right there. And they have this really cool
40:14
Speaker 1: instrument on it. The problem, of course, when you point
40:17
Speaker 1: a telescope at a planet that's really far away is
40:20
Speaker 1: that it's also next to a star, and that star
40:22
Speaker 1: sort of drowns it out. And so to keep your
40:25
Speaker 1: instrument from getting like swamped by the star, they have
40:28
Speaker 1: this thing called a coronagraph which they used to basically
40:31
Speaker 1: block the life from the star. They move it so
40:33
Speaker 1: that it blocks the life from the star and you
40:35
Speaker 1: can only see around the star the corona of the star.
40:38
Speaker 1: People do this to study the corona of the sun,
40:41
Speaker 1: block out the Sun. It has at like a little
40:43
Speaker 1: dot in the middle. M m. It's a little the
40:46
Speaker 1: middle to block out the life from the star, so
40:48
Speaker 1: you could only see the stuff near it avoid your
40:51
Speaker 1: instrument from getting like swamped and saturated from all the
40:54
Speaker 1: light from that star. So we could that will help
40:56
Speaker 1: us visualize these exoplanets, so it doesn't look like a J. J.
40:59
Speaker 1: Abrams version of Star Wars sequel with all the lens
41:04
Speaker 1: flares exactly, lens flares, not documentary lens flares, not real physics,
41:10
Speaker 1: all right, And so to close out the episode, we
41:12
Speaker 1: thought we'd have Alex tell us a little bit about
41:15
Speaker 1: what we can expect from the James Webb Telescope. So
41:18
Speaker 1: this telescope is the biggest telescope that we've ever built.
41:24
Speaker 1: This is really meant to answer some of the big
41:26
Speaker 1: questions like, you know, why where do we come from?
41:29
Speaker 1: And are we alone? And the possibilities for what's out
41:34
Speaker 1: there are tremendous, and so we're gonna see all the
41:38
Speaker 1: way back, you know, into our deepest history, but then
41:42
Speaker 1: all the way out to to you know, what could
41:45
Speaker 1: be out there now. And you know, we're probably not
41:48
Speaker 1: going to see another mission of this, of this magnitude
41:51
Speaker 1: in my lifetime. Well, you can really hear the excitement
41:54
Speaker 1: in the voice of these astronomers. You know, we are
41:56
Speaker 1: building them where they're building a huge new toy, and
42:00
Speaker 1: we're paying for it, but they get to see the light.
42:02
Speaker 1: And so I'm excited for them, and I'm excited for
42:05
Speaker 1: what humanity is gonna learn. I'm excited for what those
42:08
Speaker 1: first stars and first galaxies are gonna look like and
42:11
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see pictures of other planets. Yeah, that's definitely.
42:14
Speaker 1: I think a sequel that will get me to pay
42:17
Speaker 1: for another movie ticket ticket. I think joking aside, I
42:21
Speaker 1: would definitely pay more taxes if it meant we've got
42:24
Speaker 1: to build more awesome space telescopes. You know, Daniel, you
42:27
Speaker 1: can't pay more taxes if you wanted to know. But
42:30
Speaker 1: I can't fund the space telescope with my income. Everybody's
42:33
Speaker 1: got to pay more taxes to make that happen. All right, Well,
42:36
Speaker 1: hopefully this will get more people excited about it, and
42:39
Speaker 1: so when the trailer drops, people will um share it
42:43
Speaker 1: and be even more excited. And so stay tuned. It's
42:46
Speaker 1: coming out in a couple of years, and hopefully it
42:48
Speaker 1: will tell us all about where we came from. I'm excited.
42:52
Speaker 1: I hope you're excited, and we'll look forward to unpacking
42:55
Speaker 1: the discoveries of the James Web space telescopes sometime in
42:59
Speaker 1: late you one, Well, thanks for listening, see you next time.
43:10
Speaker 1: Before you still have a question after listening to all
43:12
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us the line we'd love to
43:16
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
43:18
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
43:22
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
43:26
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
43:29
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio from
43:32
Speaker 1: More podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
43:35
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
43:39
Speaker 1: favorite shows.