We have a powerful n ew technological instrument. to probe the darkness .
The James Webb telescope represents a quantum leap in man's exploration of the universe!
James Webb telescope. will advance into the black unknown giving us knowledge of the first and furthest galaxies..
What James Web b will reveal will open a new era in man's. understanding of the universe.
Webb has vision in the infrared ....whereas Hubble could only see in the visible light part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum.
We need telescopes to scan the universe at all the wavelenghts of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum.
Checking the Web, it appears that Hubble was able to see objects about 400 million years after BB, whereas Webb is supposed to see objects as they appeared 250 million to 100 million years after Big Bang.
Assuming the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago, .Jame s Webbwill get uus to within 13.6 billion years of the BB begining of the universse..
What are the limitations wch prevent us from seeing all the way back to the Big Bang event itself?
How to see light or electromagnetic radiation that origiinated from its source greater than 13.6 billion years ago?
We may not be able to see all the way back to the Big Bang beginning (there may not be anything to see past a critical. threshold horizon ), but we may be able to see back to the time when the first stars appeared and agregated into ga!laxies. Perhaps there were no point sources of electrmagnetic radiation before stars appeared.
At first there was just hot plasma made of quarks,.These then aggregated into hydrogen and helium atoms wch then under the influence of gravity aggregated into. stars and galaxies.
Lets hope it does not encounter any glitches wch would prevent it from fulfilling its mission
What a waste of 10 billion dollars!!
ReplyDeleteThink what that amount of money coould have done on earth!
Maximum possible diameter of the universe (assuming that the rate of expansion cannot exceed the speed of light):
ReplyDeleteJames Webb space telescope launched in December 2021 has detected light from galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago--just 100 million years from the beginning of the universe (100 million years from the Big Bang event wch ocurred 13.8 billion years ago).
This was long before our region of the universe came into existence just 4.5 billion years ago!
13.7 billion years ago (when the universe was just 100 million yesrs old)the universe was a much smaller sphere with a radius of .......(100 million years X distance light travels in a year) ..compared to its much expanded volume today!
What was the radius of the universe 100 million years after the Origin Event(Big Bang)?
Assuming a maximum expansion rate equal to the speed of light (5.8 trillion miles/year X 100 million years = 5800,000,000,000 X 100,000,000 = 5.8 X 10^20 miles
If the universe has been expanding at 5.8 trillion miles per year for 13.8 billion years...its present radius is 8.00 X 10^22 miles
One year after the Big Bang, the universe would have expanded to a radius of 5.8 trillion miles (5.8 X 10^12 miles) This is the distance light travels in a year! ...or 9.5 trillion kilometers
......(.and a diameter of 11.6 X 10^12 miles)
If the universe is "expanding", what is it expand ing into?
ReplyDeleteWhat is beyond the outer edge/boundary of yhe universe?
Is the universe expanding into "nothingness"?
Perhaps the word "no-thingness" could be replaced with the equivalent idea of emptiness,vacuum,or darkness.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning there was nothhing,--just emptiness......wch gave birth to some-thing (energy/light)wch grew and spread, and expanded....and came to occupy more and more of the emptiness.
James Webb space telescope launched in December 2021 has detected light from galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago--just 100 million years from the beginning of the universe (100 million years from the Big Bang event wch ocurred 13.8 billion years ago. . Objects 13.7 billlion light years away are extremely faint and any electromagnetic radiation reaching us from them very weak.Seeing beyond 13. 7 billion light years is not now achievable given our current instrumentation and available technologies. Presently we cannot detect/observe electromagneetic radiation emanating from sources further than 13.7 billion light years from us. Hopefully. the next generation of telescopes will bridge the last 100 million light years distance ,and allow us to see all the way back to the beginning of time and space (the event cosmologists refer to as the Big Bang). That will be a momentous occasion, wch some have described as "seeing God face to face"!
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ReplyDeleteRUMI Says the Source is within us:
"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade, but do not be disheartened. The source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it."
For all our efforts to create more and more sophisticated instruments to make the invisible visible, the universe is too vast to be understood by the rational mind..
ReplyDeleteBut that's all we have....except feeling and imagination
"The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand."
ReplyDeleteRumi