The James Webb Telescope has been busy since launch, and it's definitely found things never
seen before.
The images coming back are mind blowing, like this one of the Inner Orion Nebula.
It also grabbed the very first direct image of a planet outside our solar system.
And this incredible image of the northern region of the Orion Nebula shows off the incredible
detail of eerie cosmic canyons of gas and dust.
But the James Webb Space Telescope took an image that some say disprove the Big Bang
theory.
Is the Big Bang Theory in trouble, and what else did the Webb Space Telescope find?
[LOGO]
On Christmas Day, December 25, 2021, astronomers held their breath as an Ariane 5 heavy rocket
carried the James Webb Space Telescope into space.
After that, it took 30 days for the telescope to travel 1.5 million kilometers, and reach
its operational location.
It would take another six months for engineers to set up instruments, and align the telescope's
18 gold hexagonal mirrors.
But on July 12, 2022, it sent back its first images that stunned everyone.
One of those images now holds the record for the deepest view of the universe ever taken,
and shows the galaxy cluster named SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.
The cluster of galaxies is so heavy that it warps the light from much more distant galaxies
behind the cluster.
But this image reveals so much more than the original Hubble deep field image, and it's
just a tiny sliver of the vast universe.
One of the big surprises is that the galaxies caught in the image are much more massive,
and the other is they are far more structured than previously imagined.
In other words no one believed these galaxies could be so well organized in the early universe.
It is this reason that a well known science writer, Eric J. Lerner believes the newly
revealed galaxies in the deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope prove
there was no Big Bang and the universe is much older and static.
Lerner wrote a book in 1991 called ‘The Big Bang Never Happened’, and instead believes
in something called plasma cosmology.
Of course, many online channels jumped at the chance to parrot the false information.
But is there any truth to Lerner’s theory?
While it is true that some unexpected images of galaxies came back from the $10-billion-dollar
James Webb Space Telescope, the Big Bang theory is still holding up strong.
As the late great Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
So far Mr. Lerner hasn’t provided any solid evidence to support his theory.
Despite the false rumor that the Big Bang never happened, because of the amazingly detailed
JWST deep field image, the other images from the space telescope were equally incredible.
One of the most breathtaking and unexpected images was taken of the planet Jupiter in
August 2022.
Giant storms, powerful winds, and auroras can clearly be seen, and it certainly looks
like Jupiter has a whole lot more going on than previously thought.
In the photo, you can see Jupiter's dust rings, and its moons Amalthea and Adrastea.
Compared to the first image taken of Jupiter taken by Andrew Ainslie Common in Ealing,
London, on September 3, 1879, using a 91-centimeter reflector, this image truly showcases the
imaging power of the James Webb Space Telescope.
As beautiful as the images look, the colors don’t match what the human eye would see
since our eyes aren’t capable of picking up infrared radiation.
What you’re seeing is the result of image processors mapping longer infrared wavelengths
to the red end of the visible spectrum, and shorter wavelengths towards the blue spectrum.
This mimics how the human eye perceives visible light.
This is the JWST image next to the latest Hubble telescope image of Jupiter.
The Hubble image definitely looks more natural to the human eye.
But the much higher details in the image from the JWST can clearly be seen.
But this isn’t all the mega billion dollar telescope has imaged and discovered.
One of the first targets of focus for the Webb Space Telescope was the exoplanet WASP-39b,
which lies in the Virgo constellation around 700 light years from Earth.
This gas-giant planet is a bit bigger than Jupiter, and orbits what astronomers call
a G-type star.
This hot gas giant, much like Saturn, orbits close to its star, giving the space telescope
the perfect target to image its atmosphere.
NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes revealed the presence of water vapor, potassium,
and sodium in the planet's atmosphere.
Despite this, no one was absolutely sure about the findings.
However, the Webb Telescope’s super sensitive infrared instruments have now confirmed these
things, and the presence of carbon dioxide on this planet as well.
Finding carbon dioxide might not sound like the most ground-breaking thing, but it's important
because it's a very sensitive measuring stick for understanding heavy elements in the atmospheres
of giant and rocky exoplanets.
The James Webb Space Telescope also used its Near-Infrared Spectrograph [NIRSpec] on Mars
on September 5, 2022.
The NIRSpec module can easily detect the spectral signatures of carbon dioxide, water, and carbon
monoxide.
Not only that, but a preliminary analysis of a spectrum with a rich set of spectral
features can contain information from dust and icy clouds, to even what kinds of rocks
are on a planet's surface.
With this kind of power, the James Webb Space Telescope is just getting started.
Recently, the Webb telescope focused its powerful gaze towards Neptune and grabbed this ghostly
image of the planet, and seven of its 14 known moons.
Keep in mind that Neptune is 30 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth and lies
in the dark region of our solar system.
And, if you’re wondering why Neptune’s moon Triton is shining like a bright star
in the image, it’s because it's covered in a frozen sheet of condensed nitrogen that
reflects around 70% of the sunlight that hits its surface.
These images look a lot different than images we’re used to seeing of Neptune as an icy-blue
orb.
The difference is these images were taken with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera [NIRCAM]
which observes in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns.
This is why Neptune doesn’t look blue to the Webb telescope.
Another thing is that the methane gas of Neptune strongly absorbs red and infrared light, and
this makes the planet very dark at near infrared wavelengths.
JWST also grabbed a few new images of Stephan’s Quintet; a group of galaxies that are close
enough together that they give astronomers a front row seat to galactic mergers and interactions.
In other words; Stephan’s Quintet is a sort of cosmic laboratory that’s going to allow
astronomers to see how galaxies merging together trigger the formation of stars.
The image shows clusters of millions of young stars, and sweeping tails of gas and dust
being pulled on by the gravitational interactions of the galaxies.
The most dramatic part of the composite image is the huge shockwave of the galaxy NGC 7318B
as it smashes through the cluster.
But if you want to see something really incredible, then take a look at the NIRCam image of the
Tarantula Nebula.
It’s a mosaic image that stretches 340-light-years across, and shows tens of thousands of young
stars that have never been seen before because they are shrouded in cosmic dust.
The most active region in the middle sparkles with young stars that appear blue.
To the upper left of the young star cluster is an older star shining brightly and displaying
the distinctive eight diffraction spikes that is an artifact of the Webb telescope's structure.
Farther from the core of the young stars, cooler and much more dense gas takes on a
reddish-rust color: complex hydrocarbons that will form future stars.
New images coming in from the James Webb Space Telescope really showcase its power.
This is the Heart Of The Phantom Galaxy imaged with the telescope's Mid-InfraRed Instrument
[MIRI] In this incredible view, masses of gas and dust are sharply highlighted within
the galaxy’s arms, with the dense cluster of stars at its core.
Another jaw-dropping image is the Cosmic Cliffs image from the JWST’s NIRCam.
The image reveals star birth that couldn’t be seen before thanks to the Near-Infrared
Camera.
The Cosmic Cliffs is a gigantic gaseous cavity about 7,600 light years away from us.
What looks like steam that appears to rise from the celestial cliffs is actually hot
ionized gas and dust that is streaming away from the nebula due to intense ultraviolet
radiation.
Bubbles and cavities are blown into the gas and dust from the intense radiation and stellar
winds of newborn stars.
These images are certainly impressive.
But what about all this talk of the James Webb Space Telescope being able to look back
in time?
In July 2022, after the first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope
found what some astronomers are calling the oldest galaxy ever seen.
They named it GLASS-z13, and its age has been dated back to 300 million years after the
Big Bang.
This galaxy is so far away from us that it has taken 13.4 billion years for its light
to reach us.
But, because of the expansion of the universe, the distance between us and the galaxy is
now a mind boggling 32-billion-light-years away!
Eventually, in the very distant future, the amount of galaxies that we can see, including
GLASS-z13, will grow far less over time as they slip past the observable edge of the
universe.
The discoveries have been incredible so far, and from estimates made by engineers, the
telescope should have enough power to work for about 20 years opening the universe to
us.
But this is as long as the mirrors stay undamaged.
The James Webb Space Telescope has already sustained permanent damage when a micrometeoroid
struck one of the mirrors.
The small rock that hit the telescope in May 2022, caused significant and uncorrectable
damage.
Thankfully, we don’t have anything to worry about, because the damage is small enough
at the full telescope level that it’s not going to cause a big problem.
NASA is hoping the micrometeoroid strike was a rare thing.
Now that you’ve seen them, what do you think about the discoveries so far?
Do you think we will eventually find a planet like ours out there somewhere with the James
Webb Telescope?
Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks for watching.