The James Webb Space Telescope: Hubble's Mind-Blowing Successor | Answers With Joe

in January of 1996 basically 22 years ago a meeting of the American Astronomical Society was brought to silence over one picture from the Hubble Space Telescope taken over ten days in December of 1995 this audacious image was gathered by pointing the telescope and a tiny patch of sky only 0.09 arc seconds wide a patch of sky with nothing in it now you gotta understand the Hubble was still brand-new at the time time on the Hubble was a precious thing and here's somebody wanted to spend ten days looking at nothing who would do such a thing this was the brainchild of dr. Robert Williams who at the time was the president of the Space Telescope Science Institute and to say that this was risky would be an understatement but dr. Williams wanted to really push the telescope to his limits what could it show us that we've never seen before and what it showed us was more than anybody could have ever expected more than 3,000 galaxies in a space in the sky about the size of a grain of rice held at arm's length every single dot in this image is an entire galaxy made up of hundreds of billions of stars from billions of light-years away this was more than just in awe inspiring lips at the vastness of the universe it was a look back in time to some of the earliest stars and galaxies that ever existed the power of this photo can't be underestimated it was followed up by the Hubble Southfield the Ultra Deep Field in the extreme deep field all of which confirmed that this soup of galaxies extends out in all directions all around us but it was this first Deep Field photo from Hubble a photo taken on a whim that has completely changed our perspective with the cosmos some people have called it the most important photo ever taken that is what scientific advancement can do when Hubble was launched everybody knew it was gonna blow our minds but it still managed to surprise us so just imagine what we're gonna find in 2019 when NASA launches a new Space Telescope that's a hundred times more powerful than Hubble it's the James Webb Space Telescope a telescope so powerful it'll be able to see to the beginning of time so earlier this year I did a video on the top news stories to look out for in science in 2018 some people said that I should have put this James Webb Space Telescope on that video but I didn't because it is actually not going out until 2019 now it was scheduled for a while to come out in 2018 it has now been pushed to 2019 so that they can do more testing which is fine let them do their testing because they got to get this thing right plans have been in the works to follow up Hubble before Hubble was even launched but it was in 1996 when they created the next generation Space Telescope program or NGS T designed to build a bigger better Hubble can't help but notice that that was right after the Hubble Deep Field photo was released probably had nothing to do with it the project was originally planned to be five hundred million dollars that's gonna change and they reached out to Lockheed Martin and TRW for designs in 2002 NASA named this telescope after James Webb who was a former NASA Administrator who actually guided NASA from mercury into Apollo and awarded the contract to TRW who later that year were bought out by northrop grumman by 2005 that was clear that the original plan for the James Webb's was completely unrealistic so they did an entire nuri plan of the project this time with a 4.5 billion dollar budget and a 2013 launch date that's gonna change the project moved ahead slowly after that it missed pretty much every deadline but it did pass all of its mission critical design reviews or MC DRS every single part of the ship had to be an M CDR compliant which it did do but that takes time project was rebooted again in 2011 this time with a whopping 8.8 billion dollar budget and a 2017 launch date and that's gonna change at this point in its Wolin so large that the US Congress actually voted to defund the project this was later reinstated though as I mentioned previously the launch date has now been pushed to 2019 although they have stuck with that budget so far it should be noted that the u.s. is not shouldering all the burden for this the James Webb Space Telescope is actually a coordinated effort between NASA the CSA the Canadian Space Agency and the ESA the European Space Agency so let's talk about what we're getting for this eight billion dollars shall we the first thing everybody talks about with James Webb Space Telescope is the or I should say mirrors the collecting surface is a massive 6.5 meters diagonal or 21.3 feet as tall as a two-story building the only way to get a mirror that size in the place is to fold it up so the mirrors may not have 18 hexagonal gold-coated beryllium units that fold together to make one surface by the way the mirror and the Hubble you know the mirror that gave us an oppressor dented new view of the cosmos and changed our perspective on everything is 2.4 meters this Dwarfs Hubble and unlike Hubble which could see in the infrared visible in ultraviolet wavelengths the James Webb Space Telescope is focused primarily on infrared the reason for that is because the James Webb telescope is primary function is to find the farthest and earliest stars and galaxies in the universe think of the Hubble Deep Field photograph on steroids and meth and because of the expansion of the universe the further away a star is the more redshifted their light becomes so the furthest galaxies will be redshifted way into the mid and deep infrared the problem with capturing light in this wavelength is that anything that gives off heat gives off infrared radiation so you have to block all that the James Webb Space Telescope does this in a few ways the first is just where it is unlike Hubble which orbits around Earth the James Webb Space Telescope will orbit alongside earth in the l2 Lagrange point so the garage points are these spots and the orbit of a planet where the gravitation of the planet and the star kind of even out there are five on each planet and James Webb will be on the l2 L'Orange point which is on the other side of Earth from the Sun by doing this it ensures that all the infrared radiation from both the planet and the Sun will be on the same side then all you need is a giant-ass Solar shield the solar shield on the bottom of the JWST is freaking amazing it's a for later polyamide membrane with aluminum on one side and silicon on the other that keeps the dark side of the telescope down to below 50 Kelvin the trick with infrared telescopes is that in order to see these wavelengths you have to be really really cold like so cold that even the heat from the computer on the telescope can mess with the readings that's why most infrared telescopes don't last very long because they have to have coolant on board to keep everything cold when that coolant runs out it stops doing its job properly but the James Webb cools passively as much as possible through these heat shields they are the size of a tennis court in thinner than a human hair they have to be insanely thin to keep them weighing too much in fact everything about this telescope was designed so that it could be foldable so that it could be logical the James Webb designers were heavily inspired by origami the Japanese art of paper folding the unfolding process for the James Webb telescope will take more than 14 days once it gets into orbit these will be two very long weeks because the probe is gonna be going way out beyond the orbit of the moon 1.5 million kilometres away if any of these meticulously designed unfolding procedures goes wrong it's screwed we ain't fixing it you know the Hubble has been such a success but so many people forget it was kind of a disaster when it first went up because there was a problem with the focusing mechanism all the images came back fuzzy and worthless it was only after a really amazing repair operation from the space shuttle that it got back on line and became the telescope that it is today this will not be an option with the James Webb so that's why I am fine with them pushing me at the launch date test test test make sure this thing works the mission is expected to last about five years with the goal of it maybe stretching out to ten it won't unfortunately have the staying power that Hubble has not just because the coolant issue I mentioned before but also because the l2 Lagrange point is not a stable orbit they're doing what's called a halo orbit over there and that actually requires some propellant which also will eventually run out of juice but once it's up there it is going to be able to see further than any other telescope in human history it'll be able to see the first stars and galaxies forming the very beginning light in the universe after the Big Bang it'll also be sensitive enough to do spectral astronomy on exoplanets so basically when an exoplanet passes in front of its star when it does a transit the light passing through the atmosphere of that planet the James Webb will be able to determine what the composition of that atmosphere is so don't be surprised if we discover a whole lot of new habitable exoplanets the next five to ten years one specific star that the James Webb wants to focus on is kic 8 4 6 2 8 5 2 or tabby star which I covered in a video about a month or so ago that will probably be completely outdated the second James Webb takes look at it but just like the Hubble the biggest results from the JWST are the that we can't even imagine right now and that's super exciting so James Webb is considered a next generation telescope you might be asking yourself what is the next next generation telescope where do we go from here there are many ideas in the works but one of the top contenders is the large you the optical Infrared Survey telescope or Lu blah loop Y is a 12 meter mirror telescope that will be able to see in multiple wavelengths including the visible spectrum which James Webb can't do the only used to study galaxy formation in the early universe much like the James Webb telescope but one really cool thing about it is it's gonna have an onboard chronograph which will actually block out the Starlight meaning it'll be able to get visible confirmation of exoplanets like no other telescope has been able to do and best of all it looks like something that was designed by supreme leader snoke now the reason we like space telescopes is because it gets clean light from stars that has not been disturbed by our atmosphere you know we like our little twinkling stars when we don't want them to twinkle when we're studying them but with advanced computer technology called adaptive optics ground-based telescopes are able to adjust for that disturbance in the atmosphere to get clean pictures like never before and this opens up a lot of opportunities enter the 30-meter telescope in Hawaii purse atop Mauna Kea the 30 meter telescopes mirror has a diameter of you guessed it 30 meters with a collection area of 655 square meters made up of 492 individual segments this will have capabilities from the ultraviolet visible to the mid infrared range giving it a wide spectrum of wavelengths they can cover the 30 meter has run into a lot of delays due to protests from Native Hawaiians who believe that the land that they're building it on is sacred apparently the peaks in Hawaii are considered sacred by the natives so it's been delayed many times it actually got shut down in 2015 by the state of Hawaii and then the land Resources Board we re approved their permits in 2017 to start building again that is by no means a guarantee that it will move forward if it does get shut down again there is a second location in the Canary Islands and it might move - there are a couple of other extremely large telescopes worth mentioning one is called the European extremely large telescope because scientists are so good at naming things it's actually got a 40 meter mirror on it there's one called the Large Magellanic oak both of those are gonna be based in Chile but all this is dwarfed by the Chinese 500 meter aperture spherical telescope or fast this is a radio telescope that is twice as big as the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico it's actually already gotten some first light in 2016 it's already started working I think it discovered a couple of pulsars but it's not fully operational yet won't be fully operational for another few years right now the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to be launched from French Guiana on an Aryan v rocket sometime between March and June of next year and these other massive telescopes these ground-based telescope that was talking about are supposed to go into operation in the early 2020s we might be entering a whole new golden era of astronomy over the next ten years imagine waking up every day with a new image as mind-blowing as the Hubble Deep Field I don't know about you but I can't wait so which one of these telescopes sound the most interesting to you is there one that I did not mention that you're really excited about and think back on the Hubble like what has been your favorite discovery and image that's come out of Hubble over the last 20 years talk about it in the comments thank you guys so much for watching if you like my t-shirt you can have it or this one or any other of dozens of t-shirts that are available at the answers with Joe calm slash shirts store lots of really cool designs there go check them out also this video sponsored by concur boy comm if you get regular canker sores you don't have to deal with them anymore there is a vitamin supplement that can knock it out in 70% of people it is worth a shot you get a free money back guarantee if it doesn't work for you just go to tanker boy calm and give it a try big thanks to the answer files on patreon who help support this channel this is pretty much what I do now see your support really doesn't mean the world to me it really does help I have some new people who have joined the tribe I want to call out real quick we got Ryan Brees Coby villian mensagam Reed dev'reaux Bouchard / Leo Rosa Sexton violence Akash Alphonse breakthrough media's Giovanni Calero Strongbow my favorite signer Rogerio font as diverse in de and vale western thank you guys so much if you would like to join them and get access to free perks and hear me murder your name on camera you can go to patreon.com/scishow answers with joe alright like and share if you liked it and this is your first time here I invite you to check out some of my other and if you like those hit subscribe because I come back with videos just like this every Monday alright thanks a lot for watching you guys go out and have an eye-opening week and I'll see you next Monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 539,885

Rating: 4.9195194 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, james webb space telescope, nasa, northrop grumman, hubble space telescope, hubble deep field, hubble ultra deep field, infraded astronomy, tabby's star, james webb solar sheild, james webb, astronomy, thirty meter telescope, european extremely large telescope, large magellan telescope, LUVOIR telescope, langrange points

Id: G4LjhjHUXO4

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018