OT. New Telescope

[Dean Hoffman]

NASA launched a new telescope a couple days ago. It's supposed to see almost to the beginning.

[Boris]

Dean Hoffman [e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Thanks for the article. Reminds me of this:

From goodreads.com:

"In his newest work, "Is Atheism Dead?" Eric Metaxas masterfully builds the case for the existence of God with copious amounts of scientific evidence, archeological findings, and undeniable facts in a way that is logical and wonderfully readable. In fact, most of the scientific and historical data will astound you!"

[gfretwell]

Has "the beginning" even arrived here yet or is it still on it's way? These telescopes are now looking back in time and we are nowhere near seeing the beginning yet.

[micky]

Yeah, they launched it from French Guiana of all places.

I still get a kick out of Hubble, that they launched with the wrong mirror. Or the right mirror but the wrong shape. Measure twice, cut once.

Appparently they fixed it but I don't know how and I wonder if it put a little less resolution in it?

[Idlehands]

First images are coming in....

[angelica...]

You should investigate the cause more closely.

Another issue where you could just look at Wikipedia and know 1000 times more than by guessing and looking like a fool.

My husband knows a guy who was involved with the fix.

Cindy Hamilton

[Scott Lurndal]

It's here, we just haven't had the technology to see it. Until hopefully a couple months from now.

[Scott Lurndal]

No, since it's getting further away with time, the light becomes more and more red-shifted (see Hubble's Law) and thus lower energy.

To detect it you need instruments _outside of the atmosphere_ that can detect and measure the lower-energy red-shifted signal.

[Marilyn Manson]

Don't worry...Webb isn't going to look back that far.

"While Hubble can see back 400 million years after the Big Bang, Webb can possibly look back 100 million years after the event."

That's if it actually works up to its potential.

"Webb has 344 ?single points of failure? along its complex deployment process. If a step during deployment goes wrong, or if something appears off, mission managers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore would pause the deployment process and determine a new way to proceed."

I'm not sure what they define as a "single point of failure". My math says there are a lot more than that. The following numbers are just for the sunshield, not the mirror, and they say that the 708 parts listed "all...have to work properly".

"This is an incredibly complex process. The sunshield structure has 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, 400 pulleys, 90 cables and eight deployment motors, all of which have to work properly for the five layers to deploy as planned, NASA officials said in the video."

I saw one interview during which a person involved in the sunshield deployment process said that if a component gets hung up during deployment, they can make the telescope "shake and shimmy" to try and loosen things up. Kind of like a slap on the side of your TV, but a million or so miles away. ;-)

At 1 million miles from earth, fixing Webb, like they fixed Hubble, is just not possible.

[gfretwell]

If it is already here, we missed it. The things we see in deep space happened a very long time ago and I hope we are not trying to see things that already got here. Otherwise there won't be anything to see. ;-)

If we see anything more than 13.8 Billion light years away it blows the current big bang theory all to hell

[gfretwell]

I understand that but the light coming this way is/was still coming this way at C or very close to it The color may be shifted but C is still C minus the effect of a less than perfect vacuum.

[gfretwell]

Cool, That is still pretty close. It makes you wonder what they see happening 100 million years after the big bang (13.7 billion years) and what they might see if it is a fraction of a percent better. What is the over/under on the 13.8 billion years? ;-)

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I seem to remember hearing about seeing things that are 46 billion light years away. Apparently, it's possible because they were much closer when the light left them.

[Sam Hill]

..or maybe those parts are expanding in the opposite direction! :)