Front Burner - James Webb telescope reveals galaxies far, far away

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Last week, NASA revealed five images from the James Webb Space Telescope which gave the sharpest look at the universe’s cosmic history. The images, which showed stunning visuals of orange and red gasses, spinning galaxies and dying stars, are the first to show in detail what the universe looked like billions of light-years away. The telescope, which was launched last December, is a collaboration between NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies and is designed to be successor to the older Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists and viewers alike have been in awe of these images. Today on Front Burner, we unpack the enormity of these visuals, what they mean for space research and why so many are emotional over these images with science writer Shannon Stirone.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Earlier than this, the first focused images that we took, where they were razor sharp, that for me was the one where I had the very emotional reaction. Jane Rigby is an astrophysicist at NASA who works with the James Webb Space Telescope. And even before it captured the otherworldly shots NASA revealed last week,

scientists like Rigby found the test photos overwhelming. Oh, my goodness, it works. And it works better than we thought. Personally, I went and had an ugly cry, okay? I just...and...yeah. The JWST is like a successor to the Hubble telescope, and NASA partnered with the Canadian Space Agency on it. Its instruments can pick up light from near the dawn of the universe and help us learn how

galaxies were formed, or even if there's life on other planets. Development has basically been cursed with tech problems and billions in cost overruns, But somehow NASA blasted JW into space in December. Decollage liftoff from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself. James Webb begins a voyage. And last week, NASA unveiled the first five images from the telescope showing a night sky that's no longer empty. Show it, show it, show it, show it. It's called Stefan's Quintet. Whoa. Oh my gosh. Whoa. Yes, like you said, Quintet.

Our producer Derek, he described his favorite image of the Carina Nebula really beautifully. It looks like a cosmic beach, he said. Thousands of glimmering pebbles on impossibly orange sand. And above, sunken treasures in the deep, barely twinkling up from the ocean floor. Canadian scientists involved with the telescope know these photos actually show birthplaces of stars and galaxies from billions of years ago. But some of the reactions have been just as emotional. It's kind of let us, you know, fulfill the hopes and dreams of an entire generation of astronomers. And I was on a plane when these images were released and I was crying. I know intellectually that the universe is unfathomably large and that there are more

stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth and whatever. But seeing that image, just wow. And here's the thing. It's not just scientists who are losing it over the amount of detail here. A lot of average people are looking deep into the cosmos through these pictures and feeling something they can hardly describe. You can't even comprehend just this photo. We are so small. cosmos through these pictures and feeling something they can hardly describe. You can't even comprehend just this photo. We are so small.

Are there really all those other galaxies like that? What's going on here? I feel better. My existential crisis is actually remedied. So today, I want to break down why the chaos of the universe has been the perfect antidote for the chaotic times on Earth. Science writer Shannon Sterone is here with me again to discuss why both scientists and the layest of laypeople are having a galaxy brain moment. Hi, Shannon. Thank you so much for coming back onto FrontBurner. Hi, thanks for having me. Hi Shannon, thank you so much for coming back onto FrontBurner. Hi, thanks for having me.

Okay, so these five photos from NASA, they're so incredible. They show stuff like a dying star, a star nursery, extremely ancient galaxies. When you first saw these images last week, what did you think? How did you react? Oh, I was in complete bliss, honestly. I, it's so funny to wait for these photos for so many years and to, to try to picture them as beautiful as you could possibly imagine. It's like Hubble turned up to 11, but even in preparation for that, I was not ready for what I saw. I just, I laughed, I wept, I cussed a little bit. I just stared at my computer and couldn't believe my eyes. It was an amazing moment. You wept, eh? Like, tell me more. Why do you think you did?

I think I was moved. I mean, I have a lot of feelings about space in general, but I think these photos went so far beyond my expectations and they were so they are so crisp and beautiful that it sort of shook me in this deep way. And I still haven't recovered from it. It's been a week and I still have this sort of buzzing, wow, that really happened. I know we're going to talk more about the emotion around all of this a little bit later, but I wonder if we could go through here how this came to be, like how we got here. What made this project in particular seem like such a long shot? Yeah, that's a good question. But this telescope has seemed pretty much doomed from the beginning. I think that it's gone through a series of delays for reasons such as bolts and washers started falling off of the telescope. There were electrical issues.

The funding, it almost got canceled for funding several years ago. At some point, the telescope was dropped. Then the launch was delayed. And there was just one thing after another year after year that got to the point where this just seemed like maybe we're doing something that's just not going to work. And that is just the string of engineering stuff. That's not even the actual design of the telescope being a terrifying engineering feat in and of itself. So having these back-to-back delays and issues, I think at some point we all just kind of felt like this telescope is cursed. There's no way this thing is launching off of Earth. And so when it finally did...

Punching a hole through the clouds, 20 seconds into the flight, good pitch program report. We were all just really stunned. And, you know, historically with NASA, when they build something that folds up and then has to go to space and unfurl, that has not gone very well. The engineering of that is so complex. So the fact that we went through years of delays and all of these issues to, okay, it launched and then, okay, it launched. It's okay. It's going out to L2 and now it's time to unfurl the sunshield. Okay, that works. Now it's time to unfurl the mirrors. That worked too. It's just been kind of the inverse of all the problems. We've also had

all the successes. So it's a very stressful, emotional journey with just this one telescope. So it's a miracle that it's even out there working at this point. And I'm still shocked by that. And just staying on this incredible engineering feat, can you just tell me a little bit more about why this was so wild? You mentioned unfurling mirrors and an unfurling sunshade. Yeah. So in order to launch something this big, so Hubble's mirror is about a third or a fourth of the size of JWST's mirror. So this telescope is enormous. And in order for us to fold something up to fit into the top of a rocket, it has to get

folded in on itself. So the design of that is inherently incredibly risky. And the fact that you're launching something that heavy, that large, and because of where the telescope is located in orbit around the sun, the back of the telescope is always facing the sun while the front is facing out to space. So the temperature differences there, like every single thing had to work perfectly for the telescope to have any chance of completing or even beginning its mission. And so far it's done that. It did get pinged with a couple of micrometeorites already, which kind of, you know, when you put something up in space, there's stuff flying around out there. So that is a little bit concerning that it's already been, it's already got a ding in the

fresh paint, so to speak, but so far, clearly, it's working well. And you mentioned this mirror and how it's, like, I think you said it was three times the size of its, like, I guess its predecessor, Hubble. And, like, what does that mean, that it's three times the size? I think it's like the size of an apartment, right? What does that give you? Yeah. All in all, the entire telescope with the mirror and the sun shield is about the size of a full tennis court. It's huge. So when we use telescopes, essentially what their function is is to take in as much light as possible. So the bigger the mirror you have, the more light you get to take in, which means the more sensitive the telescope is.

So because JWST is so much larger, it's extra sensitive. So it's, you know, orders of magnitude. I think if I'm using that phrase right to all my scientists, much better than Hubble in its sensitivity. It's very different from Hubble. So it's not, you can't really compare them. It's very different from Hubble. So it's not, you can't really compare them. It's like apples to oranges, sort of, but it is significantly more sensitive. It's the most sensitive telescope we've ever put into space. And what's different about the way that JW takes its images? That basically, I think,

lets us see through space, right, which is different than Hubble, if I'm right about that. Exactly. You are right about that. That's a shocker. Yeah. You know what you're talking about. I do not know. Could have fooled me. Also, you're exactly right. So Hubble sees in near UV light and visible light the way we see. So if you think about the electromagnetic spectrum as sort of a slinky or curly French fry, whichever one you prefer. So where we are on the electromagnetic spectrum with Hubble and the way that we see, the light is more scrunched. So sort of if your curly Q fry is really smushed down into its corkscrew shape, that's more on the electromagnetic spectrum that we see and that Hubble sees.

So James Webb Space Telescope sees in the infrared, which is when you really stretch that fry out and it starts to straighten up a little bit and becomes more wavy and that wave elongates, that is the infrared. So they are essentially staying with two different types of glasses. They have very different eyeballs. And what that allows us to do with JWST is see way further into space because as galaxies move further away and the further away that they are already, that light gets stretched out the way you're stretching out that french fry. And so the telescope is designed to see that elongated infrared light. That's what's called redshifting. So this telescope is built with eyes to keep an eye out for redshifting objects, which is the whole point of those are the oldest things in the universe. And that's what we want the telescope to look at. Some scientists, this is such a mind bend, I think, for people like me,

but they're saying that the telescope could see back in time some 13 billion years, like near the beginning of the universe. And like, how is that even possible to look into the past like that? It feels like some sort of telescope time machine. It is. You are exactly right. Telescopes are time machines. It doesn't mean that we physically travel back in time with our bodies, but we are looking back in time in a way that we could never do with any other object, but with a telescope. So we have seen further back in time, you know, billions of years with Hubble and with other telescopes using different wavelengths of light. But in that deep field, for example, that first image that we got,

there is a galaxy and that image that's 13.1 billion light years away. So it's one of the old, I think it's the oldest galaxy we've ever seen that humans have ever captured. And the way that we're able to see that far back is one having a really big mirror that's really sensitive that can collect all of that old ancient light and also be able to look in the infrared spectrum, which is where space gets extra tricky when you're looking this far out, is not only are these objects on their own 13 billion years old, but our universe is expanding and it's expanding really, really quickly. So all those objects that are already that far away are also speeding away from us really quickly. So that light gets extra stretched out. And that's where the telescope comes in is it's going to look far back, collect is that while that galaxy is incredibly old, our universe is about 14-ish billion years old. But after the Big Bang, we didn't have light the

way we think of it. Photons were not able to travel because the universe was not opaque yet. So galaxies hadn't formed. There were no... light wasn't moving around. We were just this soupy mess of high energy particles and all this stuff. And about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe became transparent. And that's about 13.2, 13.4 billion years ago. And that's those are the galaxies we're looking at with the telescope, which is the oldest galaxies we can possibly see. When we're talking about galaxies, like how much is inside those galaxies? Like what are we looking at here? Ooh, there's a lot of stars.

There's a lot of dark matter. We know there's dark energy all over the universe. So there's dark energy there as well. A lot of those galaxies, you're seeing a lot of star death. So you're seeing a lot of gas and dust that's given off when a star dies and sort of explodes its guts everywhere. That's what we're seeing in a lot of those galaxies and the new ones and the ones that are closer to us as well.

But really, we're just trying to look back and see what did galaxies look like at the beginning of the universe when galaxies first started forming, when they even became a thing in the first place? And what were their chemical compositions? Let's take the spectra of them and figure out how much hydrogen and helium did they have? How much carbon did they have? Because understanding all of that gives us a sense of the story of, okay, well, so then how likely is it that life began back then? What were the chemical compositions and the amounts of those chemicals present that far back in time? Transcription by CastingWords investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I

have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So talk to me a little bit more then about the kind of big questions that scientists are hoping these new images and data answer for them. Like, and I think this, the telescope is expected to operate for 10 plus years. I mean, hopefully if something doesn't go wrong, right?

Exactly. Yeah, it's got about a 10 year planned mission time, but it's expected to run about 20 years. So it's probably got a, hopefully a similar lifespan as Hubble, which has been operating for just over 20 years. So in addition to looking for the oldest galaxies and trying to understand galaxy formation and why does this happen? One of the biggest parts of JWT's mission is going to be looking for evidence of life around exoplanets. And it's going to do that by using its spectral instrument, which is going to look at other planets around other stars, look at the composition of those atmospheres and see what's in them. Are there organic compounds? Are there any biosignatures that would make us think

that there's a living being there that's burning something? Are they burning plastics? Do they do similar things that we do and their chemical compositions show up in their atmosphere? So it could, it has, that telescope has the potential to already fundamentally change our understanding of the universe just in the first week. But in this way, it, the implications of it are quite huge. Is it fair to say it's looking for aliens? It's looking for aliens. It's going to look for biomarkers. So it's not going to look for technosignatures, which is sort of like if you were looking, if you were a living technological using sentient being out in the universe and you pointed your telescopes and

all of your instruments at earth we would have techno signatures and we would have bio signatures so you would see you know evidence of our satellites and all of our radio waves and stuff that we're emitting off of everything that we're doing on earth and in space and you'd also see the evidence of us burning tons of fossil fuels in our atmosphere. You'd see CFCs in our atmosphere. You'd see evidence of us, you know, kind of destroying our ozone. There would be a lot of biomarkers that are not naturally occurring. And you'd go, huh, there's something there creating this aftermath of chemicals. aftermath of chemicals. So JWST is not able to look for sort of radio emissions, which is essentially would be a technosignature. It's going to look for any sort of biomass or biosignature

to see if there's potentially stuff living in the atmosphere or just evidence that there could potentially be a habitable world somewhere in the universe, which there probably are tons of them. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you think, you think, with the scientists that you talk to, do they feel like this is the first step in finding life outside, outside earth? Yeah, I think that it's, it's. Or maybe not the first step, right?

I guess there have been many steps before it, but. Exactly. Yeah. There've been many steps. I mean, we've, we've found organic compounds in lots of places. Like there are organic compounds on Saturn's moon Titan, which is in our own solar system. There's tons of carbon and methane, and there are so many molecules and organic, organic chemicals in the universe that finding other planets with atmospheres that have them in them is probably not that far-fetched. jump to organic microorganisms, to metabolizing, to evolving like we have and becoming sentient and conscious. We have no idea how that step gets made. So if we find a lot of biomarkers around other atmospheres, it's going to help us complete that picture a little bit more of knowing, okay, so these things are relatively easy to make if these chemicals are put together and they're in this type of environment. Now,

how do we make the leap from, okay, we've got all this good, gunky microorganisms, bacteria, and viruses and everything. What happens then? That's the thing we're trying to figure out. Okay, so look, I want to come back to the emotions that this has evoked. Scientists are so deep in science, right? Like, I almost expected that they'd have a clinical reaction to these images. But, like, as we talked about in the intro, we're hearing so many stories of scientists described being emotionally affected here, of weeping, just the same kind of emotion that you had when you, you know, as a science writer. So like, why do you think that is? we still culturally have this sort of notion, this idea of scientists being these really sort of cold robotic people. And the thing is, is their science by nature is barely is really creative. You have to think of the weirdest questions and you're, you know, your mind is running all the

time, but I love, this is one of the best things I think about social media is that it's giving people access to seeing how scientists are reacting to stuff like this, which is they're crying their eyes out. They're joyous. They're having parties. In the days leading up to the images release, there are people who work on the telescope who are adjacent to that world. And some of them had started to see the images. And of course, they didn't tell me anything about them, but they just said, I've been weeping in my office for the past three hours. It's so wonderful. I think that that reaction is a combination of many things. I think for them,

it's especially, they've put some of them 20 years of effort into making this become real. some of them 20 years of effort into making this become real. And that sense of accomplishment is huge. It feels like such a collective endeavor for humanity to build something this big and special and put it into space with this one unifying purpose, which is please give us some answers about how did we get here? Why are we here? How did this all happen? And doing that together, I think is so profound and connecting that it's hard. I think when you have one big moment like that to not be overcome with, with feeling with, with tears and, and joy. And it's such a beautiful thing. It's so rare for us to have a moment like this. Do you think that's also why we're seeing such similar reactions from just like normal people, like lay people who had no clue what a redshift is, perhaps even after listening,

like me are still trying to figure out what a redshift is, but still get emotional, right? Like this idea that seeing the universe is actually hit close to home. I think that it's one, just the visual element of it, that these photographs are so absurdly beautiful that I think it's hard for us to process that they're real. I think also we live in a world in a really modern time where we have spectacular CGI and we go to movies and we watch TV where people create whole worlds that aren't real on the computer. And we're like, wow, how cool would it be if a place like that existed? And then to get images from a telescope that's a million miles away and says, no, these places are real. And I took some pictures of them.

Here you go. And they're like even more beautiful. They're even more beautiful. Like, you know, than anything I've seen in Star Wars. So you and I were talking about before this interview that we're going to print them out. Like there's like high res links and put them on our wall. Yeah, you're right. They are so much more beautiful. I think

that's so hard to internalize that humans, we're such imaginative creatures and we're so creative and we think of all these beautiful paintings and beautiful movies and the most imaginative things we can do, we can do on computers now. And even collectively, we have not created anything that could touch the beauty in one of those photos. And the fact that that's our reality, that's the universe that we all live in, is so spectacular that our reality is more stunning than we could ever fathom. And that we are lucky enough that we get to see it.

I think that, like Carl Sagan once said that we, I'm forgetting the exact quote, even though it's in that article I just wrote, but essentially that we know where we came from. And I really believe that on some deep level, we have not forgotten that that is home. And that when we see those photographs, there's some deep part of us in some way that knows that's where we came from. And I think that when we exist in such a painful time and we live in our little lives where, you know, we don't feel great about ourselves or we don't feel great about our lives and to look at a photograph like the Carina Nebula and know, okay, that's where stars are born. That's where we come from. We are made of the stuff to have that beauty, that self reflected beauty come back to us in

that way, I think is such a special experience to know that's also me. You know, when you look at that photo, that's also you that you're looking at. It's just different form. It gives people, I guess, a sense of belonging. Absolutely. Yeah. Because even though, you know, I think we are, our britches are really big and we are, you know, like we're in modern times where we feel so powerful. And I mean, sometimes, but, but to have, have a moment where it's like, oh no, we are so special that we are alive and we live on this planet and we live in this universe. And not everyone has that reaction when they look at those photographs. For many people, they do feel a sense of belonging and connection with themselves and with others. And for other people, it makes them feel really anxious and lonely. Or maybe small, small. Yeah, yeah.

It's significant in a way because it's so huge. There's an interesting dividing line there because looking at pictures of the universe is going to automatically make everyone feel small. It's called the small self-effect. It's like studied by researchers. So there is an automatic smallness, but I think that the, where we teeter is that some people sort of move into, oh, I feel so special and amazing that I'm a part of this thing. Like we're all a part of this. And then others, that smallness lends itself to feeling insignificant. that smallness lends itself to feeling insignificant. Whereas the smallness, I think, for me, makes me feel more significant that somehow I'm here, somehow I'm a part of this beautiful thing, and we're all a part of this beautiful thing together. So it's really interesting to me how that split happens. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel the same as you do. I feel like I've only been in awe a few times in my life. One was certainly when I was in Nepal in the mountains, right? Because they're so large and it feels like it's a very small part of something so large. And this evokes such a similar feeling, even greater, right? Yeah, absolutely. We tend to talk about smallness as, you know, we're so tiny

and insignificant. And I think that there's a real beauty to the fact that we are really small. And I really don't think that we're, we're insignificant on the grand scale, but our existence makes us significant. And I think that if you really think about us as we're star stuff, we're specks in the universe. We are specks in the universe that are capable of love. We're capable of friendship. We're capable of making paintings and sculptures and writing books and making music. And that is amazing to me, truly amazing. And even in just one flash of a moment, when we see those pictures come up on our TV screens or our computers, I think it's sort of jostles us back into that reality of, oh my God, like we're, this is where we live. You know, this is, this is what happens

when you just look at the sky for 12 hours. It's, it's so incredible. happens when you just look at the sky for 12 hours. It's so incredible. Shannon, thank you for this. Thank you for this very cool space conversation that turned kind of philosophical. It's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Anytime. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. We'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.