Unfolding the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope
Peering Back to the Beginning of Time
“From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances and strive to imagine the sort of world into which we were born. Today, we have reached far into space. Our immediate neighborhood we know rather intimately. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades. …The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and will not be suppressed” - Edwin Hubble
Where are we? How did we get here? Are we alone?
Since the dawn of life, human beings have been asking such questions that still remain mostly a mystery today. Over time, we’ve learned more about the nature of our world and discovered that the world we live in is not all there is. Earth is just one planet in our Solar System that contains other planets, stars, and moons. And our Solar System is in a galaxy called the Milky Way, an expansive collection of stars, planets, moon, gas, and dust. Zooming out further, we can see that our galaxy is just a microscopic part of a universe that can possibly contain hundreds of billions of other galaxies. The size of the universe is beyond human comprehension. However, in the past few decades, our discovery and understanding of the universe has exploded. We sent satellites and rockets into space, put a man on the moon, and sent robots to other planets. Yet, much of the universe remains a mystery.
One of the primary tools we use to learn more about the universe are space telescopes. Earth’s atmosphere blocks light and certain wavelengths, and disrupts or blurs images that are captured by telescopes on the ground. Sending telescopes up into orbit enables them to get a clearer view of astronomical bodies. Finding the earliest galaxies requires certain conditions that are only available in space.
In 1990, NASA launched the first-ever space telescope, Hubble, into orbit. It is approximately the length of a school bus and weighs about as much as two elephants. Since its inception, Hubble has observed and taken millions of images of planets, stars, and galaxies, and has enabled us to learn more about the birth and death of stars, galaxies that are lightyears away, comets, and much more. The images taken by Hubble have helped scientists to estimate the size and age of the universe and helped us to understand how planets and galaxies form. In 2009, NASA completed its last maintenance mission for Hubble. NASA estimates that Hubble’s life expectancy will come to an end sometime between 2030-2040. The Hubble Space Telescope forever changed our knowledge of the universe and in the process, took some of the most mind-blowing images of stars and galaxies that humanity has ever seen. And it’s about to happen once again, but on a whole other level.
Enter, The James Webb Space Telescope
On Christmas 2021, NASA launched its next-generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope. It is NASA’s $10 billion, 14,000-pound, orbiting infrared observatory and the most powerful (100x more powerful than Hubble) and largest telescope sent into space. It is the product of a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and a project that took more than thirty years to complete. The telescope is a result of human ingenuity and one of the most incredible tools that humanity has ever built.
The James Webb Space Telescope, otherwise known as Webb or JWST, is building on the legacy of Hubble and previous space telescopes to further explore the universe and push the boundaries of human knowledge. Unlike Hubble which studied the universe through visible and ultraviolet light, Webb was designed to view the universe through infrared which will enable Webb to view objects that were too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Telescope. Webb’s capabilities include seeing the formation of galaxies from just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang era that occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago [1]. The significance of this should not be understated.
Back to the Past
The James Webb Space Telescope will study every phase in the history of our universe, ranging from the first luminous glows of the Big Bang to the formation of our solar systems. Because infrared light travels through dense gas clouds that block visible light, Webb will be able to reveal regions of the Universe that were previously hidden from us. The advent of this telescope presents a leap forward in humanity’s quest to understand the Universe and its origins. Its goal is to learn more about the early universe, the formation of galaxies, the lifecycle of stars, planetary systems, and the origins of life.
When Astronomers use a telescope to peer into the depth of our solar system, they are also looking back in time. The reason is that light needs time to travel through space. Light moves with extreme speed and appears almost instantly when kept within the confines of our planet. But across the vast distances in space, there is a delay between when we see something and when it actually happened and the farther away an object is, the farther back in time we are looking. For example, when we look at the Sun, we are actually looking at the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago.
The furthest that the Hubble Space Telescope has viewed was over 13 billion light-years away. (Given the massive scale of the universe, astronomers measure distance using light years. A beam of light travels in a single Earth year. One light year = approximately six trillion miles). Where Hubble could observe young galaxies, Webb will be able to show us galaxies in their infant stage. Webb was engineered to observe the earliest stages of galaxy formation in hopes that astronomers would be able to understand how galaxies looked as they came into being and help map the universe’s overall structure. We have yet to study this far back in time.
Galaxies Over Time
The Milky Way is just one of the billions of galaxies in the universe. Astronomers have observed, through Hubble that galaxies grow and change over time. The population of the galaxies in the early universe is much different than it is now. They were less defined, had more supernovas (powerful explosions of stars), and collided more frequently. However, the driving force and sharp decline of these activities remain a mystery.
Webb’s infrared instruments will expand the observable universe and allow astronomers to detect the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang era over 13 billion years ago. Astronomers will use Webb’s spectrograph (device that breaks light up into component colors) tools, astronomers will study details about merging galaxies and the process of galaxy formation and evolution.
Life Cycle of a Star and the Beginning of Planetary Formation
As commonly known, our study of the universe began with us looking up at our night sky. Stars not only evoke a sense of awe, but they are also the essential sources of raw material in the universe. Through a star’s life cycle, they disperse its elements through a process of formation, burning fuel, and scattering its material when it runs out of fuel to eventually recombine with planets, asteroids, other stars, or even life itself.
The life cycle of a star is still shrouded in mystery. Stars are surrounded by massive clouds of dust that light observatories, like Hubble, are unable to view. To gain a better understanding of how planets form, astronomers need further observation of stars. This is where Webb comes in. Webb’s imagery and spectroscopy capabilities will enable us to peer through the dust and to study stars as soon as they form. This will also allow astronomers to obtain a better understanding of how planets form. Webb will help to fill in blanks in the earliest chapters of our history, improving our understanding of how the universe functions through the lifecycles of stars and how we came to where we are today [4].
Other Worlds
In 1990, the only planets we knew about were the ones that revolved around our Sun in the solar system. Our horizons have expanded since and we now recognize thousands of other planets that orbit stars. Studying the exoplanets could be the answer to one of the trying questions of existence: Are we alone?
What Webb Has Shown Us In The Past Month!
On July 12, 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope released its first images which just so happened to be the deepest and sharpest images of the universe ever taken, marking the beginning of a new era in astronomy and space discovery.
Every single dot in this image is a galaxy. When I said that the size universe is beyond human comprehension, this is what I meant!
Since then, Webb has already taken stunning photos including an image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, which is one of the coolest images I have ever seen.
This incredible photo of the Southern Ring Nebula
As well as stars in the Carina Nebula dubbed the Cosmic Cliffs
The Webb telescope has only been collecting data for less than a month and already has discovered the oldest galaxy that we have seen.
Conclusion:
The goals of the James Webb Space Telescope is to find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and to detect some of the very first star formations in planetary systems. The chemical elements of life were first produced in the first generation of stars after the Big Bang era, attaining knowledge that will help us better understand ourselves and our world. Scientists and astronomers alike have ideas and predictions but at the end of the day, are just theories. The images and observations from Webb will help us uncover and learn more about the universe. The universe is a mysterious place. We don’t know if we are alone, we don’t know the expanse of it. We think our world is everything to us, yet in relation to the size of our universe, we are supremely minuscule. The James Webb Space Telescope will unlock a new generation of space discovery that will rewrite our textbooks and help us understand the universe that we live in. By understanding more about how the universe began, it may help us to better understand its future.
Thank you for reading!
Fun Fact: DID YOU KNOW the nearest star is over 4 light-years away? So when we look at that nearest star, we see it as it was four years ago.
We are seeing the light the star left four years previously and is just reaching us now.
Many of the stars we see in the night sky have actually died a long time ago! MIND-BLOWING. The size of the universe is absolutely beyond comprehension.
Resources:
[1] https://webbtelescope.org/webb-science/the-observatory
[2] https://webb.nasa.gov/content/features/bigBangQandA.html
[3] https://webbtelescope.org/quick-facts/all-quick-facts
[4] https://webbtelescope.org/webb-science/the-star-lifecycle
[5] https://www.quantamagazine.org/two-weeks-in-the-webb-space-telescope-is-reshaping-astronomy-20220725/
• James Webb Space Telescope - First Images: https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery
• VIDEO - The Insane Engineering of James Webb Telescope: