James Webb Space Telescope

[ZoyzaSorris]

Always love an Alberon space thread, thanks! Let's hope this comes off.

[Endicott]

Do you know what a false dichotomy is, B?

[ZoyzaSorris]

Just as non scientist not really familiar with space and stuff, will anything we learn from all this work help solve any of the problems on our planet?

'Let's only do science that has a direct measurable economic benefit' sounds a bit Tory mate (cost of everything, value of nothing etc..)
We might as well just be pigs wallowing in and scoffing our own muck until death if we aren't aiming a bit higher than only trying to learn things that lead to the next meal.

[Replies From View]

We've all flung a frisbee into a tree and had to go home without it - the failure of this space telescope scenario would probably be twice or even three times as deflating.

The number of single-point failures for Webb, by comparison, is a factor of three greater than the seven-minute landing of Perseverance on Mars.

Told you.

[Mr Trumpet]

Can we look at some new planets with this? I'm bored of the current 8/9

[Dex Sawash]

They should rename it the ZZ Top point.

James Webb is the only astronomer who isn't a spider

[Dex Sawash]

Do you know what a false dichotomy is, B?

A doctor cuts your extra dich off?

[The Dog]

Yes. The problems of finding out what happened in the early universe.

If we know what happened maybe we can fix it?

[idunnosomename]

Will this look back at Earth and see me having a wank? Fucking perverts

[Replies From View]

Must say, I'm quite perplexed by the possibility of seeing the origin of the universe by peering more deeply into space.  Hasn't all that matter moved since then at a slower rate than the speed of light, and we can see those objects in space from our telescopes.

But we don't see the same thing in multiple stages of its existence, do we(?), because we can look deeper into space but the light from those moments will have already passed us.  It will have passed the Earth long before that matter continued forming at slower than the speed of light into the things we can now see. 

So how can we see the origin of the universe by looking deeper into space?  Baffles me.

[Dex Sawash]

Must say, I'm quite perplexed by the possibility of seeing the origin of the universe by peering more deeply into space.  Hasn't all that matter moved since then at a slower rate than the speed of light, and we can see those objects in space from our telescopes.

But we don't see the same thing in multiple stages of its existence, do we(?), because we can look deeper into space but the light from those moments will have already passed us.  It will have passed the Earth long before that matter continued forming at slower than the speed of light into the things we can now see. 

So how can we see the origin of the universe by looking deeper into space?  Baffles me.

Just squint a bit, try it

[Replies From View]

Just resolve it with better glasses, I suppose.  I am very short sighted and have an astigmatism.

[hamfist]

If you look at a star 4 light years away then you'll see what it looked like 4 years ago

If you look at something 1'000,000,000 light years away then you're looking at it as it appeared 1'000,000,000 years ago

So you can't see multiple stages of the same thing, but you have to look at stuff further away to get further back in time.

I'd love to know which stars have done a supernova-dozy but we still see them in their prime like watching old Jimmy Savile shows before he was a nonce.

[Replies From View]

If you look at a star 4 light years away then you'll see what it looked like 4 years ago

If you look at something 1'000,000,000 light years away then you're looking at it as it appeared 1'000,000,000 years ago

So you can't see multiple stages of the same thing, but you have to look at stuff further away to get further back in time.

I'd love to know which stars have done a supernova-dozy but we still see them in their prime like watching old Jimmy Savile shows before he was a nonce.

But they talk about looking back to light from the origin of the universe - well that would be matter that has since moved on, which would surely amount to an earlier stage of the same things.


It is confusing, I want to understand this but I expect not to work hard to get there.  I expect it just to instantly make sense to my stupid brain.

[idunnosomename]

Could it look back at Hitler and see him as a baby

[bgmnts]

'Let's only do science that has a direct measurable economic benefit' sounds a bit Tory mate (cost of everything, value of nothing etc..)
We might as well just be pigs wallowing in and scoffing our own muck until death if we aren't aiming a bit higher than only trying to learn things that lead to the next meal.

I dont care about an economic benefit more about solving problems like starvation and disease and climate change and that.

If tories want to change that shit then yeah I guess i'm tory.

[Fr.Bigley]

I reckon the telescope won't work. It'll fuck up somewhere either during the unfurling of the sail or the mirror. Then I'll laugh at them on twitter and agrieve some NERDS.

[Gurke and Hare]

But they talk about looking back to light from the origin of the universe - well that would be matter that has since moved on, which would surely amount to an earlier stage of the same things.

It's moved on now, yes, but we want to look at it as it was at the beginning of the universe. I think.

I dont care about an economic benefit more about solving problems like starvation and disease and climate change and that.

It's still a false dichotomy. Solving those problems needn't prevent big space telescopes happening.

[Dex Sawash]

Will this look back at Earth and see me having a wank? Fucking perverts

It'll be a wank from the distant past so you can have them done as paedos

[Johnny Foreigner]

Hubble suffered from spherical aberration, which was corrected by giving the telescope some spectacles. This thing will be too far out to go and put some glasses on it, especially if you consider that no one has ever travelled farther than the Moon.

But Hubble already spotted objects from some 12,000 million years ago, when they let it look at an empty bit of Ursa Minor (?) for three consecutive weeks. They were young, irregular galaxies that were in the process of adopting their galaxy shape. If the universe is about 12,500 million years old, you would not be able to see any further. Any light that, after the Big Bang, travelled in the opposite direction from ours, would be behind our event horizon.

[Tony Tony Tony]

What's the betting that like all Xmas technology it doesn't come batteries included?

Then we can laugh at the space nerds panicking trying to find a corner shop open in Houston.

[touchingcloth]

But they talk about looking back to light from the origin of the universe - well that would be matter that has since moved on, which would surely amount to an earlier stage of the same things.


It is confusing, I want to understand this but I expect not to work hard to get there.  I expect it just to instantly make sense to my stupid brain.

Perhaps the thing you're missing is that the universe is expanding, so the light from the early universe is moving away from us and we from it, at not too far from the speed of light. We can't see the very early universe (<400,000 years) cos it was moving even faster than that before then.

[Replies From View]

Well I think it should chill the fuck out.  What's the hurry

[touchingcloth]

Getting away from you, pal.

[ZoyzaSorris]

I dont care about an economic benefit more about solving problems like starvation and disease and climate change and that.

If tories want to change that shit then yeah I guess i'm tory.

Sorry mate didn't mean it! But yes, I agree it is great if science and tech can help deal with such things. But I don't think science just for the sake of discovery is a hindrance to that.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Haha, idiots, you won't see shit through that. Everyone knows telescopes are supposed to look like this:



If telescopes were supposed to look like big gold honeycomb things, pirates would have made theirs like that with all those pieces of eight they'd plundered.

[touchingcloth]

"I see no ships."

Yeah, I'm not fucking surprised.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Perhaps the thing you're missing is that the universe is expanding, so the light from the early universe is moving away from us and we from it, at not too far from the speed of light. We can't see the very early universe (<400,000 years) cos it was moving even faster than that before then.

That's interesting - I thought the expansion of space was accelerating (hence why the existential nightmare end point of head death) - so did it expand faster for a bit then slow down (before starting to accelerate again)?

[Endicott]

Basically, yes. Although there are different theories. Google inflation in the early universe.

[Endicott]

Another thing to bear in mind is that although matter can't travel faster than light, space-time can. Which is why light can't escape from a black hole, because space-time is travelling into the black hole faster than light. Add to that that the universe is expanding because space-time is expanding, and it all gets quite hard to visualise.