View Full Version : The New Webb Telescope
The Webb telescope has been in the news a lot lately. I haven't paid much attention to it till I watched an episode of NOVA about it. This telescope is a big deal and hopefully it will be around for a long time. It was originally supposed to have been launched back in 2007 but cost over-runs and other problems set it back 15 years.
It is the size of a small house and has 18 mirrors coated with gold (just 2oz for the whole 18 mirrors).
After just one month it has traveled one million miles. The pictures it is sending back are how these planets and stars looked millions and billions of years ago due to the distance they are from us and the time it takes for their light/reflection to reach us.
This article reminds us that if our sun, which is 93 million miles away, were to suddenly burn out, we wouldn't know it till 8 minutes later. Light travels @ 186,000 miles a second x 60 seconds to make a minute x 8 minutes = lights out.
The planets, solar systems and star pictures the telescope is sending back determines that they are millions and billions of years of age due to the time it takes the light/reflection to travel. In other words the pictures we see today are how these planets looked long ago, not how they look at present.
I think the purpose of the telescope is to see what is out there more so than to look for alien life since life wise, a lot can happen over millions and billions of years.
Interesting to me at least.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11010795/MailOnline-answers-big-questions-James-Webb-Space-Telescope-photos.html
Some will say that the Universe is only 4000 years old so what is the point of building this telescope anyways.
However I agree with Allen that it is good to see that we can still build and deploy instruments like this, that we haven't lost our edge.
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More mind-blowing still:
The instrument itself is the product of self-organizing molecules of primarily light elements on the rocky/watery 3rd planet from the nearby star. That somehow those molecules organized to create this telescope is astonishing. More proof that a sense of wonder of creation is as strong in scientists as it is anywhere.
It's like looking at the old trunk of pictures. You can see pictures of grandpa and gram when they were twenty five yeawrs old. They might have died a few years ago but are still there in the pictures.
Vern Humphrey
07-16-2022, 06:32
The Webb telescope has been in the news a lot lately. I haven't paid much attention to it till I watched an episode of NOVA about it. This telescope is a big deal and hopefully it will be around for a long time. It was originally supposed to have been launched back in 2007 but cost over-runs and other problems set it back 15 years.
It is the size of a small house and has 18 mirrors coated with gold (just 2oz for the whole 18 mirrors).
After just one month it has traveled one million miles. The pictures it is sending back are how these planets and stars looked millions and billions of years ago due to the distance they are from us and the time it takes for their light/reflection to reach us.
This article reminds us that if our sun, which is 93 million miles away, were to suddenly burn out, we wouldn't know it till 8 minutes later. Light travels @ 186,000 miles a second x 60 seconds to make a minute x 8 minutes = lights out.
The planets, solar systems and star pictures the telescope is sending back determines that they are millions and billions of years of age due to the time it takes the light/reflection to travel. In other words the pictures we see today are how these planets looked long ago, not how they look at present.
I think the purpose of the telescope is to see what is out there more so than to look for alien life since life wise, a lot can happen over millions and billions of years.
Interesting to me at least.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11010795/MailOnline-answers-big-questions-James-Webb-Space-Telescope-photos.html
You get the prize for drawing the stupidist response so far.
I think Togor was paraphrasing some Carl Sagan.
You get the prize for drawing the stupidist response so far.
So much for that Parochial School education instilling any sense of wonder. Of course that was never the point was it.
Vern Humphrey
07-23-2022, 01:12
What nasty, anti-Catholic bigotry!
Vern Humphrey
07-23-2022, 03:56
Not only a racist but an anti-Catholic bigot.
And they wonder why no one likes them.
Not only a racist but an anti-Catholic bigot.
And they wonder why no one likes them.
Way too passive-aggressive and far too quick with the labels. As you know, going personal like that is what LOSERS do in debates.
The fact is, we *are* made up primarily of light elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sodium, nitrogen, chlorine, that are found at the surface of the watery planet, third from the nearby star. And observed from a great distance, those elements did self-organize over many eons, and eventually launch this bit of that planet out into nearby space, where it is tuned to exquisite sensitivity to detect the most minute of patterns from the distant cosmos. A bit of planet earth, watching the universe.
So by calling the above perspective "stupid", you're just showing how narrow-minded you are, how utterly lacking you are in imagination. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, knowing for a fact that parochial education didn't emphasize this particular point of view. If mine was a "stupid" perspective as you say, then how can it be "bigoted" to point out that your instructors didn't engage in such "nonsense"???
But let's do it your way, and leave schooling out of it. That means you just lack imagination, any sense of wonder at how amazing creation is. Your loss.
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Back to the OP. The telescope is cool. As Americans let's be proud of it. Let's also give a pat on the back to the manager at NASA who was put in charge of this thing and got it back on track. His name escapes me, but surely the internet would provide.
Way too passive-aggressive and far too quick with the labels. As you know, going personal like that is what LOSERS do in debates.
The fact is, we *are* made up primarily of light elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sodium, nitrogen, chlorine, that are found at the surface of the watery planet, third from the nearby star. And observed from a great distance, those elements did self-organize over many eons, and eventually launch this bit of that planet out into nearby space, where it is tuned to exquisite sensitivity to detect the most minute of patterns from the distant cosmos. A bit of planet earth, watching the universe.
So by calling the above perspective "stupid", you're just showing how narrow-minded you are, how utterly lacking you are in imagination. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, knowing for a fact that parochial education didn't emphasize this particular point of view. If mine was a "stupid" perspective as you say, then how can it be "bigoted" to point out that your instructors didn't engage in such "nonsense"???
But let's do it your way, and leave schooling out of it. That means you just lack imagination, any sense of wonder at how amazing creation is. Your loss.
---------
Back to the OP. The telescope is cool. As Americans let's be proud of it. Let's also give a pat on the back to the manager at NASA who was put in charge of this thing and got it back on track. His name escapes me, but surely the internet would provide.
once again with the reap what you sow,
but you just can't help yourself, can you?
once again with the reap what you sow,
but you just can't help yourself, can you?
Pfft
Go back and actually read a thread for a change. Allen starts a nice science thread, gets some kudos for that, and it's Vern who has to piss on it.
The unwritten rule is: leave the pissing matches out of Gun Talk.
But if someone starts one with me here I might just oblige. Vernon didn't need to do that. He made a mistake. It happens, and only means he's human like the rest of us. It can end here if people want. Or maybe some big shot will decide THEY need to have the last word and double down on expressions of personal animus. We will see.
Vern Humphrey
07-24-2022, 06:43
once again with the reap what you sow,
but you just can't help yourself, can you?
No, he can't -- he's just describing himself.
Pfft
Go back and actually read a thread for a change. Allen starts a nice science thread, gets some kudos for that, and it's Vern who has to piss on it.
The unwritten rule is: leave the pissing matches out of Gun Talk.
But if someone starts one with me here I might just oblige. Vernon didn't need to do that. He made a mistake. It happens, and only means he's human like the rest of us. It can end here if people want. Or maybe some big shot will decide THEY need to have the last word and double down on expressions of personal animus. We will see.
pfft,
go back and read your posts,
you just cannot help yourself , you have to prove me right almost every time you post,
stop being a troll,
Got to thinking about the primary mirror, which was made in hexagonal sections.
Interesting link from our friends at NASA.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.html
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Got to thinking about the primary mirror, which was made in hexagonal sections.
Interesting link from our friends at NASA.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.html
It's big, but is it big enough? It's amazing, but could it be even amazinger? We're going to need a bigger rocket if we want to see the baby born. And so, what does that achieve? I don't want to be the guy who questions NASA's good works, but If you've seen the horse head [oops, nebula] et.el. you've seen them all. At some point infinity rears up and someone has to say enough.
It's big, but is it big enough? It's amazing, but could it be even amazinger? We're going to need a bigger rocket if we want to see the baby born. And so, what does that achieve? I don't want to be the guy who questions NASA's good works, but If you've seen the horse head galaxy et.el. you've seen them all. At some point infinity rears up and someone has to say enough.
Well this one operates in the infrared, longer wavelengths than visible light.
That matters because the stuff far away is the "oldest" light, from the earlier moments of the universe, and it has the most Doppler shift on it, causing its light to be in the infrared. So yeah, to see closer to the beginning, they needed good infrared detection. And to get it, they had to put the thing a bit further away from earth, out at one of the nearby Lagrange points, and put a giant-ass heat shield on it so that the cold side stays cold. Infrared detectors need cold. True on a Javelin missile, true on a space telescope.
I suppose the money could have gone to buying scratch-offs, but at some level I do believe that all those poor immigrants who came to America a century ago and taxed themselves to build schools where there had been none, did that in part so that someday machines like this could fly.
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