Name: Scientific Controversies: James Webb Space Telescope
Start: 2022-07-28T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2022-07-28T22:00:00-04:00
Location: Pioneer Works

Scientific Controversies: James Webb Space Telescope

Pioneer Works

Join astrophysicists Janna Levin, John Mather and Wendy Freedman to discuss the James Webb Space Telescope's first glimpse of the universe.

It was only a century ago that Edwin Hubble discovered our Milky Way galaxy is not alone. There are as many galaxies in the observable universe as there are stars in the Milky Way: hundreds of billions, each with hundreds of billions of stars and more planets than stars. The satellite named in his honor returned stunning images that peered deep into space, and into our past. Now we are on the brink of a new era, the next generation, the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb will take the deepest images into our universe yet. Webb will see through clouds of space dust into the inner regions of galaxies and nebulae that were beyond Hubble’s reach. Chemical signatures of exoplanets will be analyzed to look for habitable planets and signs of life. And Webb will look back through time towards the Big Bang in hopes of seeing the very first galaxies and stars flicker into existence. Even as astronomers wait in anticipation for the first images Webb will return, the world has been stunned by the engineering achievement. Webb is the most complex telescope ever built and the largest ever to be sent into space. From its 21.3 feet-wide mirror designed to fold into an Ariane 5 rocket and then unfurl and calibrate itself mid-flight, to its 5-layered sunshield the size of a tennis court built to sustain meteor strikes while keeping Webb’s instruments cold and operational, the James Webb Space Telescope is an engineering marvel. Most incredibly, Webb has already overcome 295 single points of failure on its million-mile journey to its destination where it now orbits the sun, readying itself for scientific observation. Unlike the Hubble, which underwent several repairs by astronauts, Webb is too far for human travel, too far to repair in the event any systems fail. Webb’s first scientific discovery is scheduled to take place mid-July. Just a few days after these images will be made available to the public, our Director of Sciences, Prof. Janna Levin, hosts NASA&#x27;s Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, Nobel Laureate John Mather, and renowned observational astronomer Wendy Freedman to discuss Webb’s very first glimpse of the universe. We are thrilled to welcome our community back into Pioneer Works for this epic iteration of Scientific Controversies.​​Join us before and after the conversation for rare grooves from DJ Black Helmet and stargazing with the Amateur Astronomers Association of NY in our garden.John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA&#x27;s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope. Dr. Mather’s research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology. As a prize postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) as well as the Principal Investigator for the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer on COBE. For his precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation using the COBE satellite, Dr. Mather was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006.Wendy Freedman is a University professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. She is the chair of the board of directors of the Giant Magellan Telescope project. Previously, she was the Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director of The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, as well as a Faculty Member and a Carnegie Fellow at the Observatories. Dr. Freedman was also a Principal Investigator of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale, a project to measure the current expansion rate of the Universe. Janna Levin is the Pioneer Works Director of Sciences and the editor-in-chief of <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pioneer Works Broadcast</a>. She is also the Claire Tow Professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. A Guggenheim Fellow, Janna has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. She is the presenter of the NOVA feature Black Hole Apocalypse, aired on PBS—the first female presenter for NOVA in 35 years. Janna also won a PEN prize for a first work of fiction. Her latest book is Black Hole Survival Guide.

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Scientific Controversies: James Webb Space Telescope

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Scientific Controversies: James Webb Space Telescope

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