“The deepest photo ever taken” and the history of scientific discovery
An 84-hour exposure on the Hubble conducted by the wonderful Space Telescope Science Institute is shown here.
And what’s beyond the edge of the Big Bang? Coming within 5 years?
The history of science over the centuries can be written in terms of improvements in resolution. From the beginning and all the way up to 1609, when Galileo’s telescope first assisted human vision, scientific knowledge consisted of making descriptions and comparisons for events taking place at measurement scales accessible to the human eye, from about 10 to the -3 (a tiny speck) and up to 10 to + 7 meters (the Milky Way), some 11 orders of magnitude. Now, 400 years later, scientific descriptions and comparisons take place at scales from 10 to the -18 and up to 10 to the +25 meters, some 44 orders of magnitude. That is, from 1609 to 2003, scientific resolution improved an average of about 8 orders of magnitude per century (or 100 million-fold per century).
Our data displays should do as well.
Beyond the edge? Who knows, but in 8 years we may be able to see to the edge, or at least a lot closer than we can see now. The James Webb Space Telescope is planned for launching in August, 2011, and will be placed at the second Lagrangian point, 930,000 miles beyond Earth’s orbit, where it will be on a relatively straight line with the Sun and Earth, to minimize the effects of their light on its optics. The JWST will operate in the near- and mid-infrared spectrum, and will be 60 times more sensitive than Hubble and 400 times more sensitive than ground-based IR telescopes. All the above is from ‘A Big Step Backward’, by Michael Mecham in the July 7, 2003 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. See more at this website:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/07073top.xml
Very interesting article from Aviation Week. Thank you, Kindly
Contributor.
See also the detailed NASA site: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov. The FAQ section is particularly helpful.
The upcoming space telescope looks like it will produce about 2
orders of magnitude improvement in seeing by about 2011, so
we’re on schedule in terms of the history of resolution.
Ground-based telescopes are also in hot pursuit of substantial
gains in resolution.
The cost is the equivalent of about 2 or 3 shuttle launches.
Why not name the new space telescope after something
scientific rather than an ex-NASA administrator? How about Hubble-2
Space Telescope? Big-Bang Space Telescope? Red-Shift
Space Telescope? Richard Feynman Space Telescope?
[link updated February 2005]
The James Webb Space Telescope is one of the best looking machines I’ve seen in some time, recalling, in its Kapton and beryllium way, David Smith’s steel wagons. Given its design, I can imagine some of the assembly techs calling it “The Sled.” As for a better name, I say celebrate the science and pay tribute to another of the great observers, Tycho Brahe and call it the BOSS, Brahe Observational Space Surveyor … or something. Equally interesting as a visual object is the ¿¿ scale thermal test model of the solar shield and mirror mast shown on the AWST cover.
“Why not name the new space telescope after something scientific rather than an ex-NASA administrator? How about Hubble-2 Space Telescope? Big-Bang Space Telescope? Red-Shift Space Telescope? Richard Feynman Space Telescope?”
I see the argument, but Hubble and Feynman are already immortals. Giving some recognition to those whose diligent service will make some future scientific giant’s work possible doesn’t seem out of line.
I hope Mike Mecham (the author of the AW&ST article on the JWST) doesn’t mind my posting his response to me after reading the comments above. There’s an interesting comment from him on getting to within one minute of the Big Bang! Wow! Here is his email:
“Questions about the name were certainly made when O’Keefe made the decision, but it’s been made so it’s all academic. In fairness, Webb was the administrator when the big Pioneers and Voyagers were funded plus a lot of smaller missions, so he did support planetary work.
As for how far back the JWST will see, I think I may have misinterpreted some info I got and overstated it. I’ve been calling around trying to determine the answer. It appears it will see back to within a minute or so of the Big Bang, not quite to the bang itself. I guess there’s quite a bit of discussion about the timing. Regards, Mike Mecham”
Although apparently a lot of interesting things happened at scales of 10 to the -24th second and such at the beginning of the Big Bang, one minute will do, it will definitely do. We have much to look forward to. Let us hope that the modest financing will not limit the performance of the telescope too much.
If a Great Administrator must be memorialized, then Webb is fine, given his work on scientific spacecraft (see the NASA link above for details of his career). But the telescope is a scientific instrument and should have a suitable name that has a forever quality or at least suggests the scientific function of the telescope. A more appropriate honor for Webb might be a NASA headquarters building. That would suggest to those within that Webb and his priorities and contributions were worthy of celebration. And a vivid, powerful message would sent by the name “Richard Feynman Space Telescope.”
As an astrophysics graduate student, I would like to note that there was substantial dissatisfaction with the name of the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers naturally would have liked to have the telescope named after a prominent scientiest, but the principal source of unhappiness was that the name was chosen without consulting the community. Many people inside and outside NASA have been working hard on this project for years (originally named the Next Generation Space Telescope, conceived in the late 80’s), and those people suddenly found out that the telescope had been renamed without their input.
Also, before the universe became cool enough for protons and electrons to combine to form the first hydrogen atoms, the universe was opaque. This was when the cosmic microwave background was emitted, about 300,000 years after the big bang. So, it’s basically impossible to see what the universe looked like any earlier than that (ie, you can’t photograph the universe 1 minute after the big bang).
How does one reference something found here in the Ask E.T. pages?
I am looking to use the quote “The history of science over the centuries can be written in terms of improvements in resolution” found at the start of this thread. I have heard in it ET’s classes and found it here again in this thread. I want to give credit where credit is due; this certainly isn’t my idea. Has this appeared in anything in print or in some other place prior to the June 16, 2003 posting date above? How ought it be referenced?
Thanks for your help,
Rafe
I’ve said that in my one-day course for many years, sometimes qualified by “Much of the history of intellectual
progress in science …” which then goes on to a powers-of-ten analysis beginning with Galileo as the first assisted eye
(thanks to Galileo’s telescope in 1610) and on through to now. Scientific resolution has increased an average
10,000,000 to 100,000,000 times per century in each of the 4 centuries since Galileo.
My idea was to depict Powers of Ten, the wonderful book and video (which moves through space), as
moving through historical time of scientific discovery. Both approaches are about the ever greater resolution of
science, seeing finer and finer, and seeing further and further.
This was written up in what became an unpublished BE chapter on spatial adjacency vs temporal stacking with Galileo’s
sunspot research and current-day interface design as the main examples.
So you may as well quote the version on the board.