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Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astronomy
- praveen9920 4y agoI am most excited about any research on dark matter that comes out of Webb’s data. That is one big puzzle to this day
- baggy_trough 4y agoThe fact that one of the mirror segments was already severely damaged by a micrometeorite makes me hope that they hurry up... the lifetime may not be as great as hoped.
- bowsamic 4y agoI heard that it's within their expected budget of damage and has literally zero impact on any parameter of the telescope due to the deformable optics
- baggy_trough 4y agoI think that understates the case. Have you seen the calibration image after the impact?
- deelowe 4y agoMy understanding is the strike happened while en route and the risk of strikes of similar severity is lower in final orbit.
- baggy_trough 4y agoThat is not correct because the damage is not present in the first calibration images that were released.
- deelowe 4y agoYou're right. Thanks for the correction.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoI haven’t. Mind linking? I suspected the damage was a little more important than people were saying, but it sounds like you might know of some evidence.
- bckr 4y agoProbably talking about this[] from[]. I think it's overstated, though. The telescope seems to have a lot of redundancy and flexibility. [] https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jNgqXUj6dDVWbSvkw5ngMk-970-80.jpg.webp https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jNgqXUj6dDVWbSvkw5ngMk-970... [] https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeoroid-damage https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeor...
- ThisIsMyAltFace 4y ago> When Webb's mission began, the affected C3 segment had a wavefront error of 56 nanometers rms (root mean square), which was in line with the 17 other mirror portions. > Post-impact, however, the error increased to 258 nm rms, but realignments to the mirror segments as a whole reduced the overall impact to just 59 nm rms. For the time being, the team wrote Webb's alignment is well within performance limits, as the realigned mirror segments are "about 5-10 nm rms above the previous best wavefront error rms values."
- koheripbal 4y agoIt sustained this strike - but more strikes like the one that happened are going to significantly reduce the lifetime of the telescope. There is no debating that that big strike was outside the model.
- topspin 4y ago> There is no debating that that big strike was outside the model. Yes it is. That means the model is wrong. Hopefully JWST doesn't devolve into a micrometeorite detector. That instrument could have been built and operated at far lower cost and one wonders if that shouldn't have been done beforehand.
- _joel 4y agoI wouldn't worry too much, they were expecting them (albeit this was a biggie). The L2 point it's at means there shouldn't be too much that collects around there, gravity wise, but it will happen again.
- koheripbal 4y agoBoth the number and size of micrometeorites is larger than what was modeled. Hopefully it was just a fluke, but if not, this telescope will not survive it's intended lifespan. As such, NASA has already started a project to optimize the orientation of the craft to minimize strikes.
- AprilArcus 4y ago"wavefront sensing recorded six localized surface deformations on the primary mirror that are attributed to impact by micrometeoroids. These occurred at a rate (roughly one per month) consistent with pre-launch expectations […] Of the six micrometeoroid strikes detected thus far through wavefront sensing, five had negligible effects". So the overall number of impacts is consistent with the modeled rate, but the size of the C3 event was outside the modeled rate.
- nuclearsugar 4y ago"Characterization of JWST science performance from commissioning" - 2022 July 12 https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2207/2207.05632.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2207/2207.05632.pdf Check out the chapter: 4.7 Micrometeoroids
- beanjuice 4y agoThe title is a bit inaccurate to the article content. Has some new finding truly un-done past findings in astronomy? How has it been reshaped? I'm as excited as anyone about what JW can provide, but it is just a new era in addition, not exception- as even the article puts it.
- bowsamic 4y ago[deleted]
- danijar 4y agoTo me, that's just bad scientific reporting then. As a scientist, I also found this headline a bit misleading.
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- 93po 4y agoAll science reporting is bad. All of it.
- replygirl 4y agoreshaping is beat-agnostic clickbait for "doing some interesting stuff". plug "reshaping" into a google news search
- throwaway4220 4y agoTo me it’s like when they say xy stock plummets (by 5%)
- prewett 4y agoHeh, I'd be fine with that. Usually it's "XY plummets because of ... (XY: -1%)". From my non-statistically informed observations, 1% is basically the noise floor, so saying "because" is misleading at best. At least 5% is pretty rare.
- sebmellen 4y agoTwo weeks of service, made possible by 26 years of development. Not unlike the 10-years-to-overnight-success pattern.
- ericmcer 4y agoAccording to this article it was Joe Bidens doing lol.
- Turneyboy 4y agoNo it wasn't. According to the article Biden unveiled the first image. That's it and that's true. No credit is being falsely attributed to him here.
- joering2 4y agoClassical "one person, overnight entrepreneurship success" that took 10 years of making and a team of skilled employees.
- hackernewds 4y agoKinda like how common people think Elon Musk "invented" Tesla, while he's not even one of the founding engineers. Yet he's invulnerable in the company despite impregnating senior leadership with impunity. Perception is reality
- xwolfi 4y agoAnd you can be sure he s not impregnating them only with impunity ;)
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- O__________O 4y agoAre the plans for the future use of the telescope public?
- Aperocky 4y agoDepend on what you mean by public, if made publicly available to universities after claims and research proposals, great. General public is probably a bad idea and waste of resources.
- zaarn 4y agoNASA generally publishes the telescope time allocations to my knowledge, you can atleast find the allocations for the next year already on the internet.
- Cerium 4y agoYes, you can see the observing schedule and a list of approved programs: https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-schedules https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-sched... https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-progra...
- dylan604 4y agoThe plans are to view things in space. Is that not publicly known? But in seriousness, if the observation schedule is going to be listed publicly, I'd imagine it would be on the Space Telescope Science Institute's website as they are in charge of the telescope's usage. https://www.stsci.edu/jwst https://www.stsci.edu/jwst
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- sxcurry 4y ago"(Only as those stars exploded did they forge heavier elements such as oxygen and spew them into the cosmos.)" I don't think this is correct - can't elements up to Iron be created through fusion in the stellar core?
- vincnetas 4y agobut you need a star to explode in order to "spew them into the cosmos".
- freemint 4y agoA sufficiently fast and heavy collision with a star might also do the trick but that is a thing we haven't observed.
- wiredfool 4y agoIt’s a large universe, so it’s probably happened. Though it would be cool to see a 9 star rack and one super fast white star heading toward them. But apparently god does not play pool with the universe.
- warble 4y agoStars micro-nova too, 'burp' so to speak which sends heavier elements out. It's also a pathway to create heavy elements.
- hinkley 4y agoToday I learned about the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen fusion cycle: https://www.britannica.com/science/CNO-cycle https://www.britannica.com/science/CNO-cycle Apparently you don't create oxygen in stars by smashing two beryllium together. Edit: interestingly, this article provides a different path, claiming C + He = O https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1727-how-elements-are-formed https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1727-how-elements-...
- simonh 4y agoYes, but a lot of that occurs in the (relatively) brief phase near the end of the lives of very massive stars as their cores collapse. Once they run out of fuel for that process they explode in a Type II Supernova.
- mupuff1234 4y agoIsn't it worth it to launch another one? Wouldn't the cost be minimal given that zero R&D is required?
- TIPSIO 4y agoIt would be so cool to have a Google Earth / zoom-like experience of everywhere you can see, like this: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...
- 6510 4y agoThen have various tiers of telescopes that you can hire to zoom in on a spot.
- zaarn 4y agoBarely worth to launch another one. It would be more cost effective to invest some R&D into building a telescope with a different target wavelength to get more science than if you had two of the same telescope. The engineers will also absolutely want to fix any issues they found in Webb already.
- aalleavitch 4y agoThe degree to which science has advanced since the Webb project started can't be understated either. We have a fundamentally better understanding of the technology available and what we even want to look at. Much better to simply move onto the next project, of which there are currently very many.
- jacquesm 4y agoThis one is probably my favorite: https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html Though I'm not sure if it will ever be built.
- meltyness 4y agoIn physics better fidelity always gives better answers, and that's exactly what this is. It's launching into an environment post-film, post-ubiquitous networking, and post-statML. In addition to a much greater deal of fidelity from the on-board hardware, humanity has attained a much greater deal of fidelity of explanation. >>> “We worked nonstop,” said Pascale. “It was like an escape room.” Astronomers (not necessarily cosmologists, or physicists) it seems are finding many reasons to be very busy with the streams of data coming from this device.
- meltyness 4y agoCertain phenomena, even in astronomy, don't have complete descriptions, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(astronomy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(astronomy)
- sega_sai 4y agoAstronomer here. This is clearly an overhyped title. Sure JWST is great and a lot will hopefully come from it, but we don't need to overhype it. So far we learned from JWST that it is performing well, but no ground breaking results (but for sure they will come). (Tbh I stopped reading quanta because every time there is a news "X solved problem nobody thought could be solved" and titles like that.)
- jacquesm 4y agoI think the machine itself, the comms, the general tech behind it is already groundbreaking enough to justify the title.
- oneoff786 4y agoThat would be a feat of engineering. Not astronomy
- wumpus 4y agoIsn't there enough credit to go around? BTW, the people who work on these details inside astronomy are called "instrumentalists", whether they're scientists or engineers.
- oneoff786 4y agoNo, and it’s not a diminishing comment to suggest otherwise. It’s a great achievement. It’s not reshaping astronomy at this time.
- Rastonbury 4y agoAnyone know how much of a difference are due to post processing of images when comparing webb and hubble? For example in the image of NGC7496 galaxy, Webb has more resolution right, but did they make the colours more intense/shifted, or are these pictures a sort of representative of what we could see with our eyes https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/07/NGC7496_Comparison.jpg https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/07/NGC749...
- jakear 4y agoAll the colors are false, it’s imaging inferred.
- z9znz 4y agoPolitely suggesting that false has some negative connotations, perhaps "artificial" would be a better word... or even illustrative or representational.
- jefftk 4y ago"False" is the traditional word here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color
- z9znz 4y agoFair enough. Then it's really a matter of intended audience. It is a correct technical term for the color-domain educated audience. Could be that I'm one of the few outside that audience, but probably not :). The wikipedia article does note that pseudo-color is an alternative, and that carries less generally negative connotation. This is all nitpicking anyway, but thanks for the bit of education! [added - although now I can pick at the definition of "true color", since it is based on the idea of how a color would appaer to a human viewer. We know pretty well that there's quite a variance of perception of color amongst humans, so there arguably is no "true color". There's just X% of people see this color. :) ]
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- caycep 4y agothat being said, I feel like there's going to be a ton of datasets to be mined for some time. When I was a summer intern in ~2000, they were still writing papers out of Viking data from the '70s
- sparker72678 4y agoNo doubt. Because all the instruments are active when observing, teams will end up with tons of data unrelated/unused in their own research. A treasure trove for future researchers for sure.
- pradn 4y agoWhat were those papers about?
- seanhunter 4y agoI couldn't believe that first image. You could clearly see the gravitational lensing causing the light to form arcs. Even for someone who knows nothing about astronomy it was super exciting.
- ycombinete 4y agoApparently some of those discs were the same galaxy see in multiple places due to the power of the lensing?
- thamer 4y agoYes, and they confirmed it was the same galaxy using spectroscopy: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G7HRMY93K0BCCBKCABAQH0V7 https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G...
- londons_explore 4y agoPresumably the path lengths are probably not identical... That means we might be able to see the same galaxy twice at different points in time? That should be a really good way to check our models are accurate!
- leeoniya 4y agoi read somewhere recently that this difference in path lengths can be measured in days, depending on distance and how off-center the lensing is.
- lasc4r 4y agoThat's pretty amazing, I'd certainly not expect more than a small time shift since it still managing to get the same light source to the same location to be detected.
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- z9znz 4y agoI like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!] Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research, being generous that would still amount to a small fraction of what we could be discovering and improving if the goals were different. And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems kind of important...
- prox 4y agoA nice dream is to think what would happen when the budget of the environmental agencies would switch with the military globally. Imagine having 800 billion a year to fix things!
- dmichulke 4y ago800bn just for the US, that is
- ncmncm 4y agoMore than everybody else combined. Not that we get that much for the money: probably most of it is simple (wholly-legal!) graft, as with NASA's SLS rocket.
- simonh 4y agoWhat we get for the money is a whole lot of aggressive expansionist wars, all over the world, that never happen. Unfortunately some still manage to slip through the net, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but if the west generally didn't spend a whole ton on military preparation I believe we'd see an awful lot more of those sorts of conflicts everywhere. Here's a historical graph of deaths from warfare. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-years https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea... You can see that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, deaths per population from warfare dropped off a cliff. Unfortunately deterrence is hard to quantify because it's about making things not happen.
- TedShiller 4y agoThat’s cool but feeding hungry people might be even more amazing to be honest
- aunty_helen 4y agoHow is that going to meet scientific goals?
- TedShiller 4y agoIf you're starving, surviving is more important than scientific goals
- aunty_helen 4y agoYou're right. We should make sure everyone lives in a utopia without suffering before we try to make any progress as a race together.
- TedShiller 4y agoI wouldn't call not going hungry "utopia".
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- dougmwne 4y agoI think this is a very counterproductive attitude. It shuts down the possibility of all art and science till we hit the goal of “nobody starves.” But then it is super easy to move those goalposts. “Nobody is homeless”, “nobody is poor”, “nobody is suffering” and so on. And it is this very science that has provided so much more wealth and quality of life. Without it we would still be blown in the winds of famines and plagues. So you could say, no science that does not solve plagues. But then we would not have funded Computer Science and we would not have AlphaFold. You could say no to astronomy, deciding it is specifically worthless, but then you might be saying no to the fundamental physics discovery that doubles global carrying capacity or solves green energy production. This is also very much ignoring the fact that hunger is political, not technical or financial. We have plenty of food, but no way to distribute it in a politically tenable way.
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- frebord 4y agoImagine the increase in existential crises the past 2 weeks.
- nickstinemates 4y agoHow do we know, uh, which direction to send it in?
- ryukoposting 4y agoWe know where the sun is, and we know to send it somewhere else.
- nickstinemates 4y agoYeah but with the enormity of the universe, there's many directions to send a a telescope in, right?
- ryukoposting 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ
- nickstinemates 4y ago:)
- SiempreViernes 4y agoYes, but there are only a few places it can go were it would stay put, which we want because if it goes too far away we loose track of it and then it's just junk that might give someone a bad day in several millions of years.
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- bryananderson 4y agoAnyone can apply for time to point JWST somewhere by making a research proposal to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). STScI weighs the proposals and picks the ones that it judges to be most compelling. This is the same system that is used for Hubble. You’d be competing with the world’s top research teams, and there isn’t remotely enough time for JWST to execute all of the proposals, so in practice your chances are low as a layperson—but anyone can at least submit a proposal.
- Pakdef 4y agoI ordered an electric bicycle from Aliexpress... after a couple of months it still had not shipped... so I canceled the order and luckily got a refund... he got lucky with his vehicle.
- samstave 4y agoAstro-physicists at CERN are not allowed to drink alcohol. SO I developed spectrum of libations lacking of spirits. I call it "Faux Tonics" I think the name reflects the energy of the idea efficiently.
- Something1234 4y agoYour source?
- samstave 4y agoSource: My 7th Sense of humor. Jeasus christ, you lot are dipswitches. --- Astro-physicists.... They like to shed light on the universe... fake alcohol?
- ge96 4y agoJust imagine leaving the Earth system and nothing you ever cared about matters anymore. Only thing is being alive.