Space Quote: The Pope Discusses the JWST

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Nimrod Oren from Pixabay.

“Do not the James Webb images also fill us with wonder, and indeed a mysterious joy, as we contemplate their sublime beauty?…The authors of sacred Scripture, writing so many centuries ago, did not have the benefit of this privilege, yet their poetic and religious imagination pondered what the moment of creation must have been like.”

–Statement by Pope Leo XIV to astronomy students who are part of a summer program hosted by the Vatican Observatory. This year the students are studying data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Video: Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Ongoing work to make the JWST a reality. (NASA)

If you are looking for some inspiration about the US space program, you might want to watch this NASA video, “Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope.”

As the NASA site explains:

Go behind the scenes with the dedicated NASA team and its partners to uncover the untold story of the James Webb Space Telescope. “Cosmic Dawn” unveils the immense challenges, groundbreaking innovations, and extraordinary efforts behind humanity’s most powerful eye on our universe, from its complex development to its nail-biting deployment a million miles away.

This is what it takes to explore our universe, and I only hope we can continue to maintain the stamina, skills, and public support to maintain the JWST and initiate similar programs.

It may be time to write to Congress and let them know that America needs more of this grit and determination, not less.

Video: The Dark Forest

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Yol Gezer from Pixabay.

And now for something really different. If you are tired of national politics, maybe its time to talk about the extinction of all life in our solar system. Just for a change of topic, of course.

The Cool Worlds Lab has an interesting video titled “Why I Don’t Buy The Dark Forest Hypothesis” that picks apart this idea that technologically advanced species throughout the galaxy are hiding from one another out of the fear that once detected they may be destroyed. You may remember the term Dark Forest from a book of the same title by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.

Its a good discussion of the hypothesis, with plenty of diagrams mapping out a civilization’s decision to either reply to, ignore, or attack a newly discovered civilization trying to communicate.

I don’t want to spoil everything, but the bottom line is that it is probably too late for us to worry about this anyway. First, we have already sent out plenty of electronic messages as well as messages intended for alien civilizations. But more importantly, the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us that a silent civilization on a distant exoplanet can still be detected as we investigate that exoplanet’s atmosphere. So if a dangerous distant civilizations was seeking out other planets with life that it could destroy, the Earth has been telegraphing life for more than 3.5 billion years.

Check it out and learn more about the hypothesis and the arguments for and against it.

Pic of the Week: Galaxy Cluster Abell S1063

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Galaxy cluster Abell S1063. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Atek, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), R. Endsley)

This week’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). The colorful image shows galaxy cluster Abell S1063 at its center. You can get dizzy if you stare at it too long. You are looking far back in time, which would make anyone dizzy.

Here is a description of what you are seeing:

This behemoth collection of galaxies, lying 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), dominates the scene. Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by glowing streaks of light, and these warped arcs are the true object of scientists’ interest: faint galaxies from the Universe’s distant past.

Abell S1063 was previously observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Frontier Fields programme. It is a strong gravitational lens: the galaxy cluster is so massive that the light of distant galaxies aligned behind it is bent around it, creating the warped arcs that we see here. Like a glass lens, it focuses the light from these faraway galaxies. The resulting images, albeit distorted, are both bright and magnified — enough to be observed and studied. This was the aim of Hubble’s observations, using the galaxy cluster as a magnifying glass to investigate the early Universe.

The new imagery from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) takes this quest even further back in time. This image showcases an incredible forest of lensing arcs around Abell S1063, which reveal distorted background galaxies at a range of cosmic distances, along with a multitude of faint galaxies and previously unseen features.

Space Stories: Strange Flashing Object, New Dwarf Planet in Our Solar System, and a Short-Lived Galaxy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia. (https://www.csiro.au/)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Strange Flashing Object Discovered in Deep Space Puzzles Astronomers“

Astronomers have detected a mystery stellar object that emitted pulses of light for two minutes every 44 minutes. A handful of objects like this have been found before, but this is the first to emit both radio waves and X-rays…An international team, led by Curtin University astronomer Ziteng Andy Wang, first detected a radio signal in data captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia...By chance, the signal was also spotted by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory on Valentine’s Day last year.

—Newsweek: “Astronomers Think They’ve Discovered a New Dwarf Planet in Our Solar System“

A team of astronomers believe they may have discovered a new dwarf planet—just like Pluto—on the edge of our solar system. The object—which orbits out beyond Neptune—has been named “2017 OF201” by the team, which was led by Sihao Cheng of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Cheng and colleagues estimate that the body has a diameter of more than 430 miles, which means that it may be large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet.

—Brighter Side of News: “Astronomers Discover That Galaxies Die Much Earlier Than Expected“

In a Universe that was only 700 million years old, long before Earth even formed, something unexpected happened. A massive galaxy stopped forming stars and went silent. This type of galaxy, called quiescent, typically needs billions of years to grow and then shut down star formation. But thanks to the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have now confirmed that one such galaxy had already died young. This ancient galaxy, called RUBIES-UDS-QG-z7, is now the most distant quiescent galaxy ever confirmed. It challenges current ideas about how quickly galaxies form and evolve in the early Universe. This discovery pushes the boundaries of what scientists thought was possible during cosmic dawn.