Who Gets The First Peek At The Secrets Of The Universe?

Short Wave

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🗓️ 7 February 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The James Webb Space Telescope is by far the most powerful space-based telescope ever deployed by the United States. But it is only one instrument, and scientists all over the world have to share. The JWST's managers received more than 1,600 research proposals for what the telescope should look at.

When an astronomer or a team does get some much-coveted telescope time, they currently get exclusive access to whatever data they collect for a full year. But there is a movement in astronomy to make most results open-access right away. That might speed up the pace of scientific discoveries and open up the data to a much wider set of researchers. On the other hand, some astronomers worry that instant open access would mostly benefit researchers who already have advantages.

In this episode, NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce talks with Short Wave scientist in residence Regina G. Barber, who has firsthand experience competing for telescope time, about who gets dibs on the data, and how that could affect equity in astronomy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:07.1	Hey everyone, I'm Regina Barber and today we're going to talk about the James Webb Space Telescope.
0:12.1	That is of course the $10 billion three-story high floating observatory that launched just over a year ago.
0:18.9	It's now out there about a million miles from Earth staring out at alien planets and distant galaxies and all kinds of well-stuffed.
0:26.5	And the excitement level among astronomers is astronomical.
0:30.5	The James Webb Space Telescope's managers just did this call out for proposals from scientists who want to use it.
0:36.5	And they got over 1600 different ideas for what it should look at.
0:40.5	Wow.
0:41.5	That's NPR's Nell Greenfield voice. Hey there now.
0:44.5	Hey, so that number over 1600 proposals, that's like a record.
0:49.5	That's more than the Hubble Space Telescope ever got.
0:52.5	More than this telescope got for its first year of its observations.
0:56.5	And you know, the bummer is, as you know, most of them will have to be rejected.
1:01.5	I actually do know that being in this field, working with the Hubble Space Telescope images, I am so familiar with how competitive this process can be.
1:10.5	And how desperate astronomers are going to be to get their hands on new observations from the James Webb Telescope.
1:16.5	And that brings us to today's subject, a controversy that's inspiring strong feelings within the astronomy community.
1:22.5	The folks who set policy for this telescope are thinking about doing something new, right?
1:27.5	Yeah, they're talking about making all of the data collected by this telescope public right away.
1:33.5	And that would be a big change because right now, if you're a scientist who proposes that the telescope looks at some galaxy or quasar, planet, or whatever,
1:42.5	and you're lucky enough to have your proposal accepted, and the telescope looks at your thing and sends its observations back to Earth,
1:49.5	you then get a year, a whole year, when you and only you have access to that.
1:55.5	No one else can see it.
	...

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