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JWST will not produce products, only data. In the 10-20 years it will operate, it will ingest enough data for tens of thousands of scientists over hundreds of y

JWST will not produce products, only data. In the 10-20 years it will operate, it will ingest enough data for tens of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years to analyze.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
That seems like a drastic overestimate. Any basis for that?
- easton_s 5y ago
  We are still analyzing data from 70 years ago. https://carnegiescience.edu/news/old-plates-new-data-mysteries-observatories%E2%80%99-basement https://carnegiescience.edu/news/old-plates-new-data-mysteri...
- justin66 5y ago
  The data don't get stale, so scientists will be able to make inferences based on that data for as long as they'd like. A lot of it will never stop being useful. If a much better telescope comes along or an especially dynamic phenomenon is discovered there might be a temptation to take more pictures of something that has already been captured, but otherwise, why would you? This data is expensive and will probably remain so for quite some time, for the obvious reasons.
dr_orpheus 5y ago
> over hundreds of years to analyze Seems like an aggressive estimate. For example the Kepler spacecraft produced a lot of data for its planet finding mission. The light curves that it sent back had some automated processing, but had multiple rounds of inspection for identifying the "objects of interest" and then confirming actual planet candidates. The backlog was on the order of a year to when data was taken. This had the additional complexity that to confirm a planet transit you really had to see it pass in front of the star twice to confirm the orbital period. JWST will also be delivering similar data over its lifetime, but I would assume that ground processing of that data will significantly improve over that timeframe.
- easton_s 5y ago
  A kindergartener today will utilize Kepler data 15 years from now in a novel way we are technologically locked out of today. Technology will always breath new life into a dataset.

JWST will not produce products, only data. In the 10-20 years it will operate, it will ingest enough data for tens of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years to analyze.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

That seems like a drastic overestimate. Any basis for that?

easton_s 5y ago
We are still analyzing data from 70 years ago. https://carnegiescience.edu/news/old-plates-new-data-mysteries-observatories%E2%80%99-basement https://carnegiescience.edu/news/old-plates-new-data-mysteri...
justin66 5y ago
The data don't get stale, so scientists will be able to make inferences based on that data for as long as they'd like. A lot of it will never stop being useful. If a much better telescope comes along or an especially dynamic phenomenon is discovered there might be a temptation to take more pictures of something that has already been captured, but otherwise, why would you? This data is expensive and will probably remain so for quite some time, for the obvious reasons.

dr_orpheus 5y ago

> over hundreds of years to analyze Seems like an aggressive estimate. For example the Kepler spacecraft produced a lot of data for its planet finding mission. The light curves that it sent back had some automated processing, but had multiple rounds of inspection for identifying the "objects of interest" and then confirming actual planet candidates. The backlog was on the order of a year to when data was taken. This had the additional complexity that to confirm a planet transit you really had to see it pass in front of the star twice to confirm the orbital period. JWST will also be delivering similar data over its lifetime, but I would assume that ground processing of that data will significantly improve over that timeframe.

easton_s 5y ago
A kindergartener today will utilize Kepler data 15 years from now in a novel way we are technologically locked out of today. Technology will always breath new life into a dataset.