- This is a replica of
a Gemini Command Module,
first launched in March of 1965,
And, we've come a long way since then.
In fact, we're building telescopes
that can see through time.
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It's no secret, the universe is enormous.
And, comparitively speaking, our species'
time on this planet has
been remarkably brief.
Yet, since the dawn of
civilization, we have
looked to the stars searching for answers.
For millenia, we've studied the movements
of the heavens, and in recent
decades, we've ventured
farther and farther from
our terrestrial home.
In October of 2018, NASA
and a group of international
collaborators will
continue our exploration,
launching the James Webb Space Telescope.
The JWST will allow us
to see further than ever
before, to the formation of
the first stars and galaxies.
But how does this all work?
How can a telescope see into the past?
We met with senior project scientist,
Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather,
to explore how the James Webb functions,
and what we can expect to
find out there in the deep.
People have said that the JWST,
will, in effect, see through time.
Could you tell us a little bit about
what it's seeing, and
why that's important.
- Sure, the Webb space telescope sees back
through time by looking
at things far away,
as they were when they sent light out.
If you look at something
really really far away,
like 5 billion light
years away, you see it
as it was 5 billion years ago.
So we really directly look back in time.
It's pursuing infra-red astronomy.
So infrared is light that you can't
necessarily see with your own eyes.
So we start with point six microns
wavelength, which is red and you
could see it, we go all the way out to
28 microns, which is a lot longer
and is more like what your body radiates.
You're transmitting 500
watts of infrared power
as we stand here, but
we have the sensitivity
to pick up the heat of a bumblebee
at the distance of the moon.
- Could you tell us a little about
some of the science that's
particularly exciting?
Some of the first steps of the program
once JWST reaches L-2?
- Well after it's working, and we're sure
that it's working and it's all focused,
we have four major areas that people
said they wanted to do a long time ago.
So the first thing was, what's the
farthest away thing you could see?
The farthest back in time you could see?
So what are the first
stars or galaxies like?
How did they grow?
What are the first black holes like,
and when did they turn up?
We don't know, gotta go look.
Natures always full of
surprises on this one.
Closer to home, how where
the stars being born?
So, you know, there's a
solar system being born
every few months in our milky way galaxy.
And we'd like to see how it happens.
We are prevented from seeing inside,
because those beautiful,
glowing dust clouds
that we see out there, they're opaque.
The Hubble cannot see through them.
Neither can anybody else's telescope.
But the infrared light
that we will be receiving
can come around the dust grains
and come to our telescope.
And we will be able to
see inside the cloud.
Closer to home, we really want to see
how do solar systems grow, and why
is the solar system like it is?
So, Earth is special, Earth is alive.
It's the only one we know
of so far that's alive.
So, let's look at the rest of the planets
in the solar system and
let's do what we can
with the planets that we'll
be finding around other stars.
As you know, we've got thousands of
planet candidates around other stars,
and some of them we can pick
up with the Webb telescope.
We got two methods.
Either you can see the
little dot orbiting,
which is unusual, it's hard to do.
Or you can see the planet
going in front of the star.
So when the planet goes
in front of it's star,
it blocks starlight, you
can tell that it's there.
But if you're really good at this, and our
telescope is designed
to be able to do this,
you can analyze the
light that went through
the planetary atmosphere, on it's way
from the star to our telescope.
So we can spread it out into
a spectrum, get the colors,
get the chemical
composition of an atmosphere
of a planet around another star.
So, we think that if somebody can find a
more or less earth-like planet around
a more or less small version of the sun,
we should be able to tell if that planet
has enough water to have an ocean.
That would be a clue that there are
planets like Earth way out there.
Astronomers already have ideas
about what we'd like to do next.
Obviously, people want to travel through
the solar system and see if the planets
that we know of are alive, or even the
satellites of Jupiter or Saturn,
whether the've got oceans.
That would be really cool.
In the telescope business, we've got ideas
to go look for the dark energy,
to see what that is about.
So the U.S. and Europe are both planning
telescopes to look for that.
There's a lot of inventions
we have to perfect
and of course, somebody's gotta
say start so we can start.
- So there you have it.
In just a few short years,
our species will have built,
launched, and operated a
telescope capable of seeing
all the way back to a
period of the universe's
development that we
have never seen before.
And who knows what else
we'll find along the way?
Thanks so much for watching.
If you'd like to learn more about the
James Webb Space Telescope,
or space exploration,
check out our website:
Now.Howstuffworks.com.
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