The inaugural images from the James Webb Space Telescope have opened a new chapter in cosmic exploration, but astronomers say the most important discoveries at the observatory may be those they have not yet imagined.
Remotely colliding galaxies, gaseous giant exoplanets, and dying star systems were the first celestial subjects captured by the multimillion-dollar observatory, putting their wide range of infrared imaging capabilities on a colorful screen and demonstrating that the telescope works as it was designed.
Webb’s gallery of early photos and spectrographic data, which astronomers compared to the results of mere “objective practice” while preparing the telescope for operational science, also provided for several areas of research planned in advance.
The competitively selected research agenda includes exploring the evolution of early galaxies, the life cycle of stars, the search for habitable planets orbiting distant suns, and the composition of the moons in our own solar system. outdoor.
But Webb’s most groundbreaking findings, 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope still in operation, may turn out to be accidental discoveries or answers to questions astronomers haven’t yet asked.
“Who knows what will come for JWST. But I’m sure we’ll have a lot of surprises,” René Doyon, principal investigator of one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager, said Tuesday at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. and Slitless Spectrograph. the agency unveiled the first full-color images of the observatory.
With Webb open seven months after its launch in December, astronomers are preparing for “something out there that we never imagined there would be,” said John Mather, a NASA Nobel Prize-winning senior astrophysicist. whose work during the 1990s helped consolidate the “Big Bang” theory of cosmology.
Mather and other scientists pointed to dark matter, an invisible and misunderstood but theoretically influential cosmic scaffold, as an enigma that Webb could unlock during his mission.
Hubble, similarly, opened up a whole new field of astrophysics dedicated to another mysterious phenomenon, dark energy, as its supernova observations led to the unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe ‘is accelerating.
Taken together, scientists estimate that dark energy and dark matter account for 95% of the known universe. All galaxies, planets, dust, gases and other visible matter in the cosmos make up only 5%.
“They were big surprises,” Mather said of the early discoveries of dark matter and dark energy.
Amber Straughn, an assistant project scientist working with Webb, said, “It’s hard to imagine what we could learn from this instrument a hundred times more powerful than we really really know yet.”
Dark matter has already taken a prominent place in Webb’s first “deep field” image, a photo composed of a distant cluster of galaxies, SMACS 0723, which offers the most detailed view to date of the early universe thanks to a magnifying effect called a gravitational lens.
The large combined mass of galaxies and other invisible matter in the foreground of the image distorts the surrounding space enough to amplify the light that comes from more distant galaxies behind them, leaving weaker, more distant objects in sight. , further back in time.
At least one of the small “photobombarding” light spots on the edge of the image dates back 13.1 billion years, or nearly 95 percent of the way to the Big Bang, the theoretical cosmic flash point that put the ‘universe in motion 13.8 billion. years ago.
But since the calculated combined mass of all visible matter in the foreground is insufficient in itself to produce the slight circular distortion seen in the image, the lens effect is strong indirect evidence of the presence of dark matter. .
“It’s the most powerful tool we have, astrophysically, for doing this kind of lens experiment,” said Jane Rigby, a scientist in Webb’s operations project. “We can’t directly detect dark matter, but we see its impact … we can see its effects in action.”
“The universe has been out there, we just had to build a telescope to see what was there,” he added.
New light was also emitted unexpectedly from Webb’s first spectrographic analysis of an exoplanet in a distant solar system, in this case a gas giant about the size of Jupiter named WASP-96 b.
The measurement of the wavelengths of light filtered through the exoplanet’s atmosphere as it orbited its own sun clearly revealed the molecular signature of water vapor in clouds and fog, characteristics that scientists they were surprised to find.
“There are discoveries in this data,” said Eric Smith, a scientist at the Webb program. “We’re making discoveries and we haven’t started testing it yet.”
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To see JWST’s first full-color images and data, visit: webb.nasa.gov
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