Better Than Expected: Astronomers Celebrate the Webb Telescope's Findings (indianexpress.com) 46
To hear the first results from the James Webb Telescope, 200 astronomers descended on the Space Telescope Science Institute for three days in December, reports the New York Times, with an update on what may be 2022's biggest science story. The $10 billion telescope "is working even better than astronomers had dared to hope" -- and astronomers are ecstatic:
At a reception after the first day of the meeting, John Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Webb's senior project scientist from the start, raised a glass to the 20,000 people who built the telescope, the 600 astronomers who had tested it in space and the new generation of scientists who would use it. "Some of you weren't even born when we started planning for it," he said. "Have at it!"
Launched on Christmas one year ago, the Webb telescope "is seven times as powerful as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope," the Times reports -- sharing what was revealed in that auditorium in December: One by one, astronomers marched to the podium and, speaking rapidly to obey the 12-minute limit, blitzed through a cosmos of discoveries. Galaxies that, even in their relative youth, had already spawned supermassive black holes. Atmospheric studies of some of the seven rocky exoplanets orbiting Trappist 1, a red dwarf star that might harbor habitable planets. (Data suggest that at least two of the exoplanets lack the bulky primordial hydrogen atmospheres that would choke off life as we know it, but they may have skimpy atmospheres of denser molecules like water or carbon dioxide.) "We're in business," declared Bjorn Benneke of the University of Montreal, as he presented data of one of the exoplanets.
Megan Reiter of Rice University took her colleagues on a "deep dive" through the Cosmic Cliffs, a cloudy hotbed of star formation in the Carina constellation, which was a favorite early piece of sky candy. She is tracing how jets from new stars, shock waves and ionizing radiation from more massive nearby stars that were born boiling hot are constantly reshaping the cosmic geography and triggering the formation of new stars. "This could be a template for what our own sun went through when it was formed," Dr. Reiter said in an interview.
Between presentations, on the sidelines and in the hallways, senior astronomers who were on hand in 1989 when the idea of the Webb telescope was first broached congratulated one another and traded war stories about the telescope's development. They gasped audibly as the youngsters showed off data that blew past their own achievements with the Hubble.
The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. And appropriately for New Year's Eve, the article concludes with a look to the future: Thus far the telescope, bristling with cameras, spectroscopes and other instruments, is exceeding expectations. (Its resolving power is twice as good as advertised.) The telescope's flawless launch, Dr. Rigby reported, has left it with enough maneuvering fuel to keep it working for 26 years or more. "These are happy numbers...."
The closing talk fell to Dr. Mather. He limned the telescope's history, and gave a shout-out to Barbara Mikulski, the former senator of Maryland, who supported the project in 2011 when it was in danger of being canceled. He also previewed NASA's next big act: a 12-meter space telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory that would seek out planets and study them.
Launched on Christmas one year ago, the Webb telescope "is seven times as powerful as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope," the Times reports -- sharing what was revealed in that auditorium in December: One by one, astronomers marched to the podium and, speaking rapidly to obey the 12-minute limit, blitzed through a cosmos of discoveries. Galaxies that, even in their relative youth, had already spawned supermassive black holes. Atmospheric studies of some of the seven rocky exoplanets orbiting Trappist 1, a red dwarf star that might harbor habitable planets. (Data suggest that at least two of the exoplanets lack the bulky primordial hydrogen atmospheres that would choke off life as we know it, but they may have skimpy atmospheres of denser molecules like water or carbon dioxide.) "We're in business," declared Bjorn Benneke of the University of Montreal, as he presented data of one of the exoplanets.
Megan Reiter of Rice University took her colleagues on a "deep dive" through the Cosmic Cliffs, a cloudy hotbed of star formation in the Carina constellation, which was a favorite early piece of sky candy. She is tracing how jets from new stars, shock waves and ionizing radiation from more massive nearby stars that were born boiling hot are constantly reshaping the cosmic geography and triggering the formation of new stars. "This could be a template for what our own sun went through when it was formed," Dr. Reiter said in an interview.
Between presentations, on the sidelines and in the hallways, senior astronomers who were on hand in 1989 when the idea of the Webb telescope was first broached congratulated one another and traded war stories about the telescope's development. They gasped audibly as the youngsters showed off data that blew past their own achievements with the Hubble.
The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. And appropriately for New Year's Eve, the article concludes with a look to the future: Thus far the telescope, bristling with cameras, spectroscopes and other instruments, is exceeding expectations. (Its resolving power is twice as good as advertised.) The telescope's flawless launch, Dr. Rigby reported, has left it with enough maneuvering fuel to keep it working for 26 years or more. "These are happy numbers...."
The closing talk fell to Dr. Mather. He limned the telescope's history, and gave a shout-out to Barbara Mikulski, the former senator of Maryland, who supported the project in 2011 when it was in danger of being canceled. He also previewed NASA's next big act: a 12-meter space telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory that would seek out planets and study them.
Wonderful News (Score:1, Troll)
Congrats to all concerned.
Now, similar success in the EV battery development quest yielding maybe a 1000 mile battery that charges in under half an hour, and that would be even more stunning and immediately useful. Waiting with great anticipation for the near future.
Re:Wonderful News (Score:4, Insightful)
What they want is a 300 mile battery that costs $500, can take 10K charge/discharge cycles, weighs 50lbs, is the size of a small suitcase, and charges in five minutes.
Except the cost, we'll be there in 15-20 years.
Re: (Score:2)
5m for a super high density 50 lbs battery? Using what to cool it so your car and the power cable don't melt?
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An EV is more efficient than an ICEV, so it's obvious that you won't need any more cooling system than an ICEV has to cool it.
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Lol holy shit dude. When you put electricity through a cable it warms up. When you put more juice through it at higher power it heats even faster. You can test this at home with most poorly built home devices like a shitty $5 lamp.
If you run the kind of power the poster is talking about for magic batteries you better have a way to dissipate that heat or your hand will scorch when you touch the cable to disconnect it.
Fuck. No one is talking about cooling the battery itself although depending on the magi
Re: (Score:2)
Lol holy shit dude.
LOL! ROFFLE!
When you put electricity through a cable it warms up.
Welcome to 1993 [justia.com], you are literally at least 30 years behind.
If you run the kind of power the poster is talking about for magic batteries you better have a way to dissipate that heat or your hand will scorch when you touch the cable to disconnect it.
Touch the cable to disconnect it? Why would you do that? If you had a battery swap system then you'd do it the same way your cellphone does it, contacts on the battery mating to contacts in the vehicle. Otherwise, you wouldn't disconnect it at all.
TL;DR: Lol holy shit dude.
Re: (Score:2)
You've never touched a Tesla have you?
I own a model 3. The handle on the power cable warms up. It's a fact.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your nonsense because you have no real world experience.
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I want a 1000 mile battery, for road trips. Then it can take 5-10 hours to charge for all I care. I would never drive more than 500 miles anyway, but need twice the mileage for highway consumption which is more expensive than average.
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I want a 1000 mile battery for road trips and another function that requires high acceleration and braking for most of the day, that takes my 25 mpg ICE vehicle down to about 12 mpg for the duration. A 1000 mile battery would for-sure serve this one specialized use case. Otherwise, my 1st day of vacation in 2019 was slightly over 1000 miles, Virginia to just west of St. Louis, and then a little farther the 2nd day, to just short of Wall, SD. After that, the Alaska Highway in Canada followed by the Dal
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1000 miles in a day? that's 16 hours of driving continuously, with no more than a 15-minute break every 2-3 hours. Unless you're driving at Cannonball Run speeds. For the last 4 hours of those 16, you'll have been a menace on the road.
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There were 2 of us in 2019 when we did the 2 1000-mile days back to back. We were headed for Alaska then, but had to turn back for medical issues. I did it solo, my former co-drive flew to Fairbanks and we went up the Dalton together in 2021. But I had some real range issues in Canada along the Alaska Highway, about 300-ish tho, not 1000. Major cities with lots of motels seemed to be 600 miles drive each day, tho. Weird. But not something to try in a 300 mile range car, 'cuz there isn't even gas
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1000 miles in a day? that's 16 hours of driving continuously, with no more than a 15-minute break every 2-3 hours. Unless you're driving at Cannonball Run speeds. For the last 4 hours of those 16, you'll have been a menace on the road.
No. It is 300 miles on a highway. Or about 3 hours driving in Germany. You never get maximum mileage on highways, and the faster you go the less efficient energy usage is.
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Yeah, you'd have to charge at least once at 100 mph average speed. You'd want a car that charges quickly with a DC fast charger.
BTW, I did win the Cannonball event in 1987 with a team of two others, so yeah, I like to drive. It was called "1 Lap of America" and wasn't a highway race, although going quickly was somewhat of an advantage.
Deep Space Scanner Tech level (Score:4, Funny)
Reading this, the image that keeps popping into my head is my race's scientist presenting to me the "deep space scanner" tech that I just got after spending the appropriate number of research points. This is where the player is presented with all the planets your colonies were able to scan now that you got the tech.
Unlike the game, however, superluminal propulsion tech is far, far behind.
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Unlike the game, however, superluminal propulsion tech is far, far behind.
You shudda researched relativity before chocolate.
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I have a suspicion the superluminal tech probably isnt gonna happen within our lifespan, or any of our descendants. Relativity is a strict mother.
Well unless that Alcubiere thing pans out, in which case, Mr Spock is out there patiently waiting for us. But I have my doubts on that one.
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Scouts are cheaper than wasting RP on the scanner. Early game you need 1 extra scout, research extra range, and then build nothing but colony ships until the galaxy fills or someone attacks one of your planets. You only need the scanner because the tech tree requires it later.
To which right wing Americans reply... (Score:3, Insightful)
...Yuuzz all fulla shiit. Gawd dun it all, an siense succs.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yes, absolutely! Only leftists like scientific advancement. All right wingers are illiterate anti-science morons barely able to put two words together. They're not even human and should be caged as the animals they are until we can implement the final solution. There's no point in trying to sterilize them or keep them locked up in ghettos. We know from last time that isn't economically viable. Straight to the camps and gas chambers with the sub-humans!
It's best for all humanity. We can have a thousand
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Yes, absolutely! Only leftists like scientific advancement. All right wingers are illiterate anti-science morons barely able to put two words together.
Obviously not all are anti-science morons. But for better or worse, even the science-literate Republicans must not offend the base. Ask a Republican candidate if they believe in AGW, or if the World was created 6000 years ago or if the great flood of the bible was a fact, and you'll have them in a very uncomfortable place.
So even if not all are anti-science, they are ruled by science deniers.
On the left, there are obviously some science deniers. Before a certain president took his party into lala land
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No idea what your gist is, but: the great floodS in the bible are facts.
Get a damn history update. It is not 1970 anymore where you simply learned "the basics" in school.
Everyone who is remotely interested in stone age history knows that the black see was flooded in a course of 30 years. 3m level rice per year. That is _one_ of the biblic floods. There were roughly a dozen in Europe alone. And hundreds on the rest of the world. Or do you think an 4miles thick ice shelf when it melts does not cause a flood?
Re: To which right wing Americans reply... (Score:2)
Nice spin. The Bible says unequivocally that the entire Earth was flooded.
So, something I've always wondered is, Noah saved the animals, but who saved the plants and trees? They don't like being drowned much more than animals do.
And what about the fish and corals? Salinity is a pretty big deal in the fish business.
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Nice spin. The Bible says unequivocally that the entire Earth was flooded.
So, something I've always wondered is, Noah saved the animals, but who saved the plants and trees? They don't like being drowned much more than animals do.
And what about the fish and corals? Salinity is a pretty big deal in the fish business.
And did the kangaroos swim over from Australia to the Middle East in order to avoid drowning?
And that much fresh water would kill the fish that normally live in saline waters.
As well - where did the water come from, and where did it go? the amount of water to cover from whatever Sea level was at the time to at least the top of Mount Aarrat (if not the higher peaks as claimed) is simply stupendous. It couldn't have come from subterranean sources as claimed. The water would have to somehow have a magicka
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I might be wrong about the source, but I think it was Carl Sagan who pointed out that there's not one word in the bible showing any indication that the author (whether god or man) had even a scintilla of knowledge that exceeded what was believed at the time.
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I might be wrong about the source, but I think it was Carl Sagan who pointed out that there's not one word in the bible showing any indication that the author (whether god or man) had even a scintilla of knowledge that exceeded what was believed at the time.
I believe you are right, although I don't know the exact quote.
The fundamentalist Christian movement is actually fairly recent, having started in the early 20th century.
Before that, it was widely believed that what was in the book was allegory, and fables. It works out so much better that way.
If we look at the flood myth in that light, it is just a sermon about being prepared. All of the other stuff is just weird fluff being added to the story. And who is to say which one is right, there are so many
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No idea what your gist is, but: the great floodS in the bible are facts.
So it is your premise that a flood so great that it covcered the entire earth from that time's sea level to over the tallest mountains is a fact?
Let's roll "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened." — Genesis 7:11 Okay, this fact says that the source of the water was subterranean - Explain how water underneath the earth could make a volumetric
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I did not talk about the wording of the bible. Aka "covering the entire earth".
I simply mention: the floods are facts.
As the bible is partly simply a "history book" - there is nothing god relevant about the floods. And obviously no one involved in writing it knew how big the world was.
And if you really want to nitpick: yes, at the end of last the "ice age" basically all of the previously known and settled world was drowned. Can't be so hard to grasp.
The USian Christian Fundamantalists demand that the word a
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I simply mention: the floods are facts.
You don't say? You need to troll better than that, because I know you aren't so stupid to think for a moment that I was intending anything other than the Christian fundamentalist dictate that every thing in the KJV version of the Bible happened exactly as written.
Of course floods will be mentioned in mythbooks. But sorry, your weak troll event isn't even remotely related to anything that I wrote. I wrote that you ask a Republican politician if the Great flood of the bible was a fact. That means the whole
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We lefties don't have to do anything nasty like that. We just sleep with your wives and daughters, thereby increasing the odds that your kids and grandkids will be smarter than you...and therefore not ultra-conservative half-wits. As an added bonus, if you look at your family tree from a genetic perspective after a leftist has passed through, it will look a bit less like a yardstick.
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Omg, yes, please add your superior genetics to my inbred tree! It's so tangled it looks like a thousand vines intertwining on a giant wall!
Without you to help us we'd be doomed to drooling between our 2 remaining teeth!
So, hey, question... if you're so smart and everyone is a complete dipshit how come you guys don't run the country and can't win a contested election without cheating? Anyway, I don't know how you're going to outbreed anyone when you're aborting yourselves into extinction, teaching activist
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...Yuuzz all fulla shiit. Gawd dun it all, an siense succs.
Alternative title, as equally flamebatious as yours:
"To which Inner-City Youths Reply"
There is more than one demographic who still preaches (while reaching for their wallets) and doesn't believe in science (because to them, science is a white racist thing, or so they're told) and believe God made this Earth.
Your sword cuts both ways. Careful which way you swing it, you may slice yourself up a bit.
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I could call that a nice attempt at a straw man, if I set the bar low enough.
Time to start planning the replacement (Score:3)
enough maneuvering fuel to keep it working for 26 years or more
Then it might just be ready in 26 years.
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Already on it [luvoirtelescope.org].
Re: White elephant (Score:2)
incredible feat (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't be but in awe when staring at beautiful pictures we get from JWST. I did follow up on the tech that enables all that on the telescope, and am very much impressed how it all came together eventually.
And while pictures - I download the hi-rez .tiff's - are very pretty to look at, far most scientific data is in the spectroscopy. From spectrums, astronomers get chemical composition, radial motion, and so forth. Analysis of those take lots of work and time, so I do expect those to come many years later.
If we may extrapolate and compare HST's initial furthering of Ed Hubble's measurement of redshifts over great distances to the history of cosmic expansion, and eventually to 1998's revelation of the acceleration of the expansion: that was nothing like anyone was expecting. Hell, one of the two teams was even called "measuring the deceleration of the universe" and they discovered the opposite. Many years after HST's launch.
And the same is true for GAIA data, DR3 is an immense dataset and DR4, a multiple of that, is on its way.
This is the age of big data astronomy, and multi-messenger astronomy. We study at all possible wavelengths of the EM spectrum and we've added gravitational wave and neutrino detectors. Combining all those is immensely powerful.
While we mere mortals gaze at the images, astrophysicists are crunching data. So far, the biggest revelation from JWST I've come across is how all these old, high-redshift galaxies look much more mature than anyone expected.
Finally, a small note for the critics: science isn't a religion, and Einstein isn't our sacred god. Therefor there's nothing sacrilegious about proving existing theories wrong. Even better, there's nothing any scientist would rather do than to prove current theories wrong and be the next Dirac or Einstein. Such never ceasing vetting of theories is how science works and has made it such a success.
I am so looking forward to new JWST observations that shake our view on the universe and our cosmic origins. And without any doubt, since we're now looking at things previously unseen, such discoveries will be made.
Re:incredible feat (Score:4, Insightful)
"Better than expected" (Score:2)
To quote a German comedian, "better than expected", if they ever create that scoring at the Tour the France, I'm entering.
Nice 'big bang theory' you've got there, guvnor (Score:3)
Be a shame if something was to... 'appen to it.
Re: Nice 'big bang theory' you've got there, guvno (Score:2)
Not that anyone seriously questions the big bang, science is long past thay. Sure, there's different theories on how or why it happens, on the minute details. Minute is an overstatement, since it's before milliseconds where uncertainties arise. Doesn't mean anyone in the field doubts the big bang. So far, the inflationary hot big bang theory by far is the best explanation for what we observe.
Also, why would any data pointing in another direction -have you seen any recent papers demonstrating such?- be somet
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Not that anyone seriously questions the big bang, science is long past thay.
Its a matter of dogma now. Anyone who questions it is a heretic and would be excommunicated from the church of scienceology.
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False. New data is welcomed with open arms, including when it upends existing theories.
Anyone who 'questions' an established theory without providing evidence to support his claims, and/or without proposing a model that does a better job of explaining every observation that led to the creation of the existing theory, is rightly not taken seriously.
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False. New data is welcomed with open arms, including when it upends existing theories.
Anyone who 'questions' an established theory without providing evidence to support his claims, and/or without proposing a model that does a better job of explaining every observation that led to the creation of the existing theory, is rightly not taken seriously.
Yes, thats the principle on which science started and thats whats taught, eg in philosophy of science. And thats exactly how it SHOULD be.
But thats not how it works in practice today. These days a scientist can literally lose their career just for wanting to do experiments that might disprove certain theories.
Science today really does take on the air of a religion.