Have you ever thought about what it was like
right after the Big Bang?
You mean like the very first stars and galaxies
forming out of, well, everything?
Yeah, like a baby universe.
It's a question that astronomers
have been asking forever.
And now we have the James Webb Space Telescope.
It's like giving us a front row seat.
The JWST, it really is a game changer.
It's like a time machine, right?
Letting us see billions of years into the past.
And it's not just about looking back in time either.
It's revolutionizing how we understand things
like how stars and planets form.
Like those amazing pictures of stellar nurseries we've seen.
Exactly.
And it can even help us study the atmospheres of planets
around other stars.
Looking for signs of life, you mean.
Exactly.
So today we're going to take a deep dive into JWST.
It's groundbreaking discoveries, the incredible engineering,
and the mysteries it might solve in the future.
Welcome to Cosmos in a Pod, Space, and Astronomy series.
So let's start with the basics.
What makes JWST so special?
I mean, we already had Hubble.
What makes this one different?
Yeah, Hubble was a huge deal.
But JWST, it's next level.
First of all, it's way bigger.
The mirror, the one that collects light,
it's like over 2 and 1 half times larger than Hubble's.
So bigger is better when it comes to telescopes.
Oh, absolutely.
A bigger mirror means it can gather more light.
So it can see fainter objects farther away.
Imagine like a giant bucket collecting rain
versus a little cup.
Makes sense.
What else is different?
Well, JWST mainly looks at the universe in infrared light,
while Hubble mostly focused on visible and ultraviolet.
Why is infrared light so important?
OK, think of trying to see through fog, visible light.
It gets scattered.
You can't see much.
But infrared light can cut right through.
So it's like having special goggles that let you
see through the cosmic fog.
Exactly.
And in space, that fog is dust and gas, blocking our view.
But JWST sees right through it.
That's incredible.
So it's bigger.
It has infrared vision.
Anything else?
Oh, yeah.
It's location.
It's not orbiting Earth like Hubble.
It's about a million miles away at a place called
the second Lagrange point, L2 for short.
Yeah.
Well, at L2, the gravity of the Earth and the sun
kind of balance out.
Let's JWST stay in a stable orbit.
And being so far from Earth means no interference
from our planet's heat and light.
So a cosmic parking spot with a great view.
You got it.
And all these things combined, its size, the infrared,
that perfect location, give us an incredible view
of the universe, nothing we've ever had before.
It sounds like the ultimate astronomical toolkit.
It really is.
Now, let's dive into some of what JWST is actually
finding out there and the vastness of space.
So one of the coolest things about JWST
is that it can look back in time.
Whoa, hold on.
Really, how far back are we talking?
We're talking about seeing the very first stars and galaxies.
No way.
The ones that formed after the Big Bang.
Yep, over 13 billion years ago.
That's just crazy.
So how does it do that?
Is it actually like a time machine or something?
Well, kind of.
It's all about how light travels.
Light has a speed limit.
Right, it's not instantaneous.
Exactly.
So the farther away something is, the longer
it takes for its light to reach us.
So when we look at those really distant objects.
We're seeing them as they were billions of years ago.
Wow, that's mind blowing.
OK, so what has JWST actually seen?
What do those early galaxies even look like?
Well, they're definitely different from the galaxies
we see around us today.
How so?
They're smaller, for one thing, and a lot more compact,
less structured.
Like baby galaxies.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
They're still in those early stages, you know?
And JWST is giving us a chance to see
how they evolve over time.
That's amazing.
What about star formation?
I know we've seen some awesome images from JWST
of those nebulae, the stellar nurseries.
Right.
So stars are born in those giant clouds of gas and dust.
They're really dense and opaque, right?
Exactly.
With visible light, it's really hard
to see what's going on inside.
Ah, but JWST can see through that with its infrared vision.
You got it.
It's like having x-ray vision for space, you know?
We can see those young stars forming,
igniting all that intense radiation,
shaping the surrounding gas and dust.
And sometimes planets start forming around them too, right?
Exactly.
JWST is giving us so much more detail
about how stars are born and evolve
than we ever had before.
Incredible.
So we've talked about the early universe, star formation.
Yeah.
What about planets?
You mentioned earlier that JWST can
study the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.
Yeah, exoplanets.
That's one of the most exciting areas of research with JWST.
For sure.
And how does it actually study those atmospheres?
Well, it analyzes the light that passes through the exoplanet's
atmosphere and looks for the fingerprints
of different molecules.
So like figuring out what the air is made of on a planet
light years away.
Yep.
We can learn about the planet's temperature, its composition,
and even look for signs of, you know, life.
Exactly.
So has it found any signs of life yet?
Well, no definitive proof yet, but it
has found some amazing things.
Like what?
Well, for example, it detected water vapor
in the atmosphere of a gas giant called WSP96B.
Oh, water vapor.
Isn't that like essential for life as we know it?
It is.
And that's just one example.
JWST is giving us so much information
about these distant worlds.
It's really opening up a whole new chapter in the search
for life beyond Earth.
It's amazing.
But I got to ask, how did they even
build something like JWST?
I mean, sending such a sensitive instrument a million miles away,
that's insane.
Yeah, it was a huge challenge for sure.
Thousands of scientists and engineers
all over the world worked on it for over 20 years.
Wow.
Talk about dedication.
What were some of the biggest hurdles they had to overcome?
Well, for starters, JWST is massive.
The main mirror is so big that it wouldn't fit in any rocket.
So how did they get it into space?
They had to design it to fold up, like origami.
No way.
Seriously.
Yeah.
And then once it reached its destination,
it had to unfold perfectly, all a million miles away from Earth.
That's unbelievable.
Talk about pressure.
And what about keeping it safe from the sun?
Well, that's where the sun shield comes in.
It's huge, like the size of a tennis court.
What does it do?
It blocks the sunlight and heat, keeping the telescope's
instruments super cold.
Like a giant parasol in space.
Exactly.
And like everything else, that sun shield
had to unfold perfectly, too.
It was a nail-biter for the mission team, that's for sure.
I bet.
It's amazing that they pulled it off.
But all that work, all that ingenuity,
it must have cost a fortune.
Yeah, it did.
Billions of dollars, actually.
And some people questioned whether it was worth it.
I can see why.
But I guess it's like any scientific endeavor, right?
The potential payoff could be huge.
That's right.
We could discover things that lead to new technologies,
inspire future scientists, even change
our understanding of our place in the universe.
That's priceless, right?
I agree.
But what about the fact that, unlike Hubble,
JWST can't be serviced?
Doesn't that mean it has a limited lifespan?
Well, yeah, it does.
It's on its own out there at L2.
So it's a ticking time bomb, basically.
Well, not exactly.
It was designed to last at least 10 years.
And so far, so good.
That's good to hear.
So we have this incredible telescope giving us
all this new knowledge.
But it's only got a limited time to do it.
What's next for JWST?
What other mysteries might it solve in the years to come?
Well, we talked about some of the big ones, right?
Like how those first stars and galaxies formed
and looking for life on other planets.
And it's already making some amazing discoveries.
But what else is out there?
What other mysteries could it help us solve?
One area where JWST could really make a difference
is in studying dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter and dark energy, those sound pretty intense.
They are.
They actually make up most of the universe.
But we don't even know what they are yet.
Wait, seriously, we can't even see them, right?
Nope.
They don't interact with light like regular matter.
So they're invisible to us.
But we know they're out there.
We know they're there because of their gravity.
We see how they affect things we can see, like galaxies
or clusters of galaxies.
So how can JWST study something invisible?
It can observe how gravity bends light.
It's called gravitational lensing.
So like a cosmic magnifying glass.
Exactly.
By looking at those distorted images,
astronomers can figure out where the dark matter is.
Wow, that's wild.
What about dark energy?
What's that all about?
Dark energy is even weirder.
It seems to be making the expansion of the universe
speed up.
Whoa, so like everything is moving apart faster and faster.
Yeah, that's the idea.
And JWST can help us study that by looking at supernovae.
Supernovae, you mean exploding stars?
How do those help?
Well, they're incredibly bright.
And because they always explode with about the same brightness,
we can use them to measure distances in space.
And then by seeing how those distances change over time.
We can see how the expansion of the universe
has changed over billions of years.
It gives us clues about what dark energy is
and what it might do in the future.
It's amazing that we can study these giant forces just
by using a telescope.
It really is.
And JWST isn't working alone either.
It's designed to work with other telescopes
on Earth and in space.
Right.
Teamwork makes the dream work even in astronomy.
Exactly.
For example, there's the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope,
which will be launching soon.
They'll be doing these huge surveys of the sky.
So while JWST is getting those close-ups,
Roman will be taking the wide shots.
You got it.
They'll work together, giving us a more complete picture
of the universe.
And there are huge ground-based telescopes too,
like the extremely large telescope.
Couldn't I hear that it's going to have a mirror bigger
than a basketball court?
Almost 40 meters across.
It'll be able to study exoplanet atmospheres
in incredible detail, maybe even take pictures of some of them.
Wow.
So it really is a team effort with all
these different telescopes.
Definitely.
And JWST is a huge part of that, pushing us forward,
helping us make these new discoveries.
It's an amazing time to be an astronomer, that's for sure.
I agree.
And it's not just about the science either, right?
These discoveries, these images, they inspire people.
Yeah, they remind us of just how incredible the universe is
and how much there still is to learn.
And who knows what we'll find next.
JWST is proof that human curiosity and ingenuity,
they can achieve amazing things.
Well, this deep dive into the James Webb Space Telescope
has been absolutely incredible.
It's amazing to think about all the work, all the discoveries,
and all the mysteries it's helping us unravel.
It really is a marvel of modern science
and a testament to the power of collaboration
and pushing the boundaries of what we know.
And if you want to keep exploring the wonders of the cosmos
with us, be sure to follow and subscribe to Cosmos
in a pod and our YouTube channel.
We've got so much more to uncover.