Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth?
The Joy of Why
Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine
4.9 • 577 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the December 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, one of the most expensive and ambitious scientific initiatives ever attempted commenced operations. Now that the telescope has been successfully deployed in its unique position in space, its advanced instruments will be able to gather data on questions that scientists once could only dream of answering. Is there life on other planets? How do supermassive black holes mold the mass in their galaxies? JWST may soon be able to tell us. In this episode, host Steven Strogatz speaks to two researchers leading JWST's observations of our universe: Marcia Rieke, the principal investigator of the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera, and Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist studying planets outside of our solar system. (For more on the JWST and the history of its construction and launch, read Natalie Wolchover's article, "The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works," which was recently honored with a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Steve Strogatz, and this is The Joy of Watt, a podcast from Quantum Magazine that takes you into some of the biggest unanswered questions in science and math today. |
| 0:14.0 | The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its destination about four times farther away than the moon, almost a million miles away from Earth. |
| 0:23.5 | At a cost of $10 billion, it's the largest, most complicated space telescope ever built. |
| 0:30.0 | It spent much of January 2022 unfolding its mirrors and components so that it can get into |
| 0:35.4 | position to give us a glimpse of the early universe. |
| 0:39.7 | The telescope is expected to change astronomy as we know it, |
| 0:43.1 | and the excitement around it is almost palpable. |
| 0:46.1 | There's a whole generation of astronomers who have been waiting for the web telescope. |
| 0:50.3 | Some say it has the potential to open up whole new fields of science. |
| 0:56.0 | But how exactly will it do that? How will the Webb Telescope change astronomy and cosmology? |
| 1:00.0 | What might it reveal about our universe and its history? |
| 1:04.0 | Our first guest today is Marsha Riki. |
| 1:07.0 | She's the principal investigator on the James Webb Space Telescope's near infrared camera. |
| 1:12.7 | Marcia is an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson. |
| 1:16.9 | She's one of the pioneers of infrared astronomy, |
| 1:20.3 | with a decades-long career that includes work on the Hubble Space Telescope |
| 1:24.1 | and the Spitzer Space Telescope. |
| 1:26.6 | Later, we'll be talking with Nicole Lewis, |
| 1:29.1 | an astrophysicist at Cornell University. Nicole specializes in exoplanets, and particularly |
| 1:36.4 | exoplanet atmospheres. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system. |
| 1:46.2 | Nicole will be using data beamed from the James Webb Space Telescope to look for conditions that just might support life on exoplanets. |
| 1:52.4 | But first, Marsha Riki, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very happy to be here. |
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