Just remember, we built that thing. The photos captured from the universe’s early moments reveal both humanity’s insignificance — and the enormity of our potential, writes the Editorial Board.
A Ball Aerospace engineer inspects the James Webb Space Telescope testbed telescope. As the principal subcontractor for Northrop Grumman Corporation, Ball Aerospace is contributing the advanced optical technology and lightweight mirror system for JWST. For a hundred days in 2017, dozens of our neighbors working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center had the privilege of hands-on experience with one of humankind’s most remarkable scientific accomplishments.
Launched on Christmas Day last year and now settled into its orbit around the sun, NASA’s flawlessly functioning instrument is transmitting full-color images more astounding than even the most star-struck astronomer could have expected. Because the light transmitting those images travels at a constant speed, seeing farther in distance means we’re also seeing farther back in time, which means, as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put it, “We’re going back almost to the beginning.
From the unfathomable depths of space and time, the Webb is reminding us that so-called space is richer and more textured than we might have imagined. We’re seeing the first light of galaxies forming more than 13 billion years ago, galaxies that contain anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars. We’re seeing galaxies colliding. We’re seeing a galaxy swirling in futile resistance to a black hole so massive it emits the energy of 40 billion suns.
We can only marvel at the ingenuity built into this technological origami folded onto the nose of an Ariane 5 rocket and then, once in orbit, unfolding like a flower responding to sunlight. Its primary mirror, comprised of gold-coated beryllium panels, is more than 20 feet across. Its multi-layered sunshield is the size of a tennis court, with each layer as thin as notebook paper.
The Webb images have the power to evoke awe. They also have the potential to change how we see ourselves. While tyrants among us wield death, destruction and misery, while we heedlessly damage this glimmering gem of light and life — the only one we know of in an apparently limitless and expanding universe — the Webb images situate our world, and ourselves, in mind-boggling perspective.
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