“To some people, this is a work of art. and it’s a very high tech piece of art," Dr. Eric Smith, a Program Scientist for The James Webb Telescope, explains.
The James Webb Telescope is a project that's been in the works for 25 years. It is the latest and greatest piece of technology that will revolutionize our knowledge of space.
Dr. Smith says, “After the big bang, our universe was dark. There were no stars. Eventually, stars turned on and galaxies formed. This is the telescope that will see that moment when the universe switched on the lights.”
The farther we can see in space, the farther we can see in time. Telescopes are like time machines.
The light from the sun takes about eight or nine minutes to get to the Earth. So we're seeing the sun as it was eight or nine minutes ago.
The Webb Telescope will be able to look back into time and see some of the very first galaxies that were born after the Big Bang.
“If you were to use the analogy with a human lifetime. We want to know what did that person look like as a baby? And so, Webb will look for those baby images of galaxies, that eventually evolved into the things we know in the local universe.”
Webb will also study the atmosphere of exoplanets, which are simply planets that orbit around a star other than our sun.
The goal is to find an exoplanet that is habitable, in the sense that it has an atmosphere like earth.
Dr. Smith explains, “At some point in the not so distant future, you’ll be able to walk out and look up at the night sky and say ‘You see that star over there? Well, two thumb widths to the right of that is a star that has a planet that we could live on - if we could get there.' ”
Webb will discover mysteries within our universe that we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
“To be able to say that for the first time in humanity’s history, I think that’s a really powerful moment," Dr. Smith says.