Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!

Webb May 1. You can dig in/nerd out at the link.

Webb Finds Water Vapor, But From a Rocky Planet or Its Star?

The upshot.

Webb looking at a rocky (Earth is a rocky planet) planet 30% bigger than Earth, 26 LY from here, orbiting a "red dwarf" (thought to be the most plentiful type of star in the Universe, and the smallest and coolest type).

The Webb spectra of the solar system reveals water vapor, one of the chemical signatures Webb is looking for. We find water in the area, it could be an atmosphere around the rocky planet.

That in turn means there could be some kind of water-based "life" on that planet ("GJ 486 b").

OR, given the star is a red dwarf, the water vapor could be coming FROM the star, possibly in a "sunspot" or some other "cooler" (temp-wise) area of the star and NOT from the planet.

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"This graphic shows the transmission spectrum obtained by Webb observations of rocky exoplanet GJ 486 b. The science team’s analysis shows hints of water vapor; however, computer models show that the signal could be from a water-rich planetary atmosphere (indicated by the blue line) or from starspots from the red dwarf host star (indicated by the yellow line). The two models diverge noticeably at shorter infrared wavelengths, indicating that additional observations with other Webb instruments will be needed to constrain the source of the water signal."

Last, the planet is NOT in the "goldilocks zone" of the star, the distance FROM the star (like Earth is in our sun's goldilocks zone, where water can exist on our surface as a liquid). Its TOO CLOSE to its sun. Temp is 800 degrees F on that planet .. no likely way for water to exist as a liquid on THAT surface.

Plus, it is UN-likely the planet has an atmosphere given is closeness to its sun... x-ray and UV-ray's FROM even a dwarf star would have blown away any atmosphere on the planet LONG ago.

Artist's conception of the system.
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What's next. The space kids have found the water. That's great. Another confirmation that Universe is FULL of water, EVEN where the solar system configuration means it UN-likely to have any kinda life WE recognize.

Now, they gotta keep look at more/different, short wavelength spectra to see IF they can determine the source of the water .. the sun, the planet, or just floating in space.

Stlll, no matter what of IF they figure out where the water is, Webb is doing great work - exceeding expectations.
 
May 15 .. Webb finds water vapor (spectrography) of a "mainstrean" comet in the asteroid belt. There's a lot to nerd out on at the links.

source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-123

Artist's conception of spectrograph of Comet Read on left, actual Webb image on right.
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Big picture.

We have been trying to figure out where Earth got all this water? Is it a unique thing in the galaxy, or can all kinda rocky planets have Earth's water-hoarding potential IF such OTHER planets were THEN also in their sun's "Goldilocks Zone" with atmospheres.

Finding water vapor around an asteroid belt object (what is theorized to be the "leftover" pieces from the formation of our solar system) tends to support a theory

That theory is that IF those little pieces, billions of years ago under the effects of gravity, clumped together to form the rocky planets (and perhaps even the cores of the gas planets), THEN they may have become planet-sized WITH a lot of that water already in them.

You can add to that cosmic events like the theorized late heavy bombardment, when comets/asteroids were raining down on the early Earth (that's why the Moon is covered with craters from those impacts, so goes part of the theory) even more water showed up on the baby Earth.

The rest of the water theory goes like that IF you wanna find "life" like humans and other stuff here, THEN you need water. Shoot, our bodies are 60% composed of water, so its safe to infer that water is key to get life as WE know it.
So, all this looking for rocky planets (see #561 too), with atmospheres, in Goldilock's zones (temps with atmospheres allowing water to exist on planets' surface as a liquid) of their suns, was one of the reasons why we - again - parked Jimbo at L2 to help find more clues to, in turn, try to answer all the BIG questions.

Another link in the data chain.
 
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More new stuff from Webb.

A globular cluster only 440 million years after the Big Bang (out of the near 14 billion years old since we think Big Bang happened). Again, the links are where interested folks can nerd out on the details.

source: James Webb Telescope finds evidence of 'celestial monster' stars the size of 10,000 suns lurking at the dawn of time
Not from Webb, but a visible light example of one of the 180 or so global clusters in the Milky Way - they are pretty old too btw. Milky Way is over 13 B years old itself.
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So what's Webb done now?

Excerpt

"The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered the first evidence that millions of supermassive stars up to 10,000 times the mass of the sun may be hiding at the dawn of the universe.

Born just 440 million years after the Big Bang, the stars could shed light on how our universe was first seeded with heavy elements. Researchers, who dubbed the giant stars "celestial monsters," published their findings May 5 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics."

Elements "heavier" than Iron (two minute PBS video)its atomic number 26 (26 protons and 26 neutrons in the nucleus only come from fusion in stars MUCH larger/hotter than our sun. Like supernovae-capable starts.

So where did all the gold, platinum, uranium and every element with atomic number over 26 come from? When did it start happenning? Webb has found these GIGANTIC stars from the beginning. That;s the science news headlilne.

We already knew globular clusters were old. We knew from the spectra BEFORE Webb what elements were present

But were could NOT previously confirm a theory (big starts that burned hot/died young - so they are gone) as to WHY UN-equal element quantities in stars in a particular cluster that formed its stars at the same time.

With Webb, our spectral discriminations is so excellent, we have found these GIGANTIC stars WERE present in these ancient clusters.

Confirming this, in turn means, these bigger starts IN the cluster, burned hotter, novaed, and "polluted" younger stars with MORE heavy elements than they would otherwise have.

Again, we theorized these monster stars existed, WAY back in time, but it took Webb to find them spectrally.
What does this ultimately mean? The space kids are working it .. another one of the questions they hoped Webb would help answer.

How did life get here?

Answering that is somewhat built on "where/when did the heavy elements show up?" We'll see I guess.
 
More Webb "insights". Heavy duty "nerd" material here at the links that interested people can dig into.

sources: Early Universe Crackled With Bursts of Star Formation, Webb Shows, GOODS South field.
Immediately below, this year (released yesterday) from Webb - A particular section of the sky in infrared. 40,000+ galaxies in this shot (40,000 x billions of stars in each "dot" = an unimaginable number of individual stars.

Look ANY direction in the sky from Earth and you will see more or less the same thing. A universe FULL of stuff.

size of the sky patch we looked at on earth? 2.3 arcminutes, or for comparison, tne full moon covers about 30 arcminutes of sky from earth. same physical size as tennis ball would look from 100 meters, or 1/24 millionth of the sky viewed from earth (source: Hubble Deep Field - Wikipedia).
stsci-01h1q2vfhvmajgh4wrnmk0dy52.png


Below, 7 years ago. Hubble pic of same area in visible light. look the same? To the naked eye, yeah. kinda.

there are 3,000 things in Hubble pic, 40,000 things in Webb pic.

However you can still see the differences in sharpness and clarity. Of course, you can't see the spectral details, that a year ago we knew NOTHING about, that has science folks excited.

To the space kids, the DETAILS from Webb are orders of magnitude great with Webb.

Again, you gotta read the "nerd" material at the links. It might take a few minutes to slog through.
heic1620a.jpg

The big deal here in two minutes as far as I can tell ....

Recall why Webb is up there. To see better, further (earlier in time) into the Universe than EVER before. Ultimately, to confirm/refute/formulate new cosmological theories on "how did we get here?"

Anyway, Webb findings in the year since its been up there, are blowing the space kids' minds.

Basically, things (e.g., stars, galaxies, planets, etc) are bigger, hotter, earlier appearing, more numerous, etc. than we EVER imagined.

And we are JUST getting started analyzing Webb data sets.

Again, will any of this rid the world of hungry people? Not directly I don't think.

But .. we shall see (well, my toddler grandkids will after I have returned to "stardust") I guess in time. We just don't know, what we don't know.
 
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amazinblue82 said:
post #460
Hubble's image was staring at the same spot in the sky for 15 days. Webb's image was staring at same spot for 12 hours?

Significance of that fact?

Webb's bigger mirror and other superior technical capabilities, IF staring at same spot for up to 15 days for example, would collect many, many times more light than Hubble (plus its infrared). That in turn means fainter and/or further away objects Hubble could never see Webb could see.

1659709168526-png.png


All that in turn means the promise of Webb -- seeing back to the very FIRST things (galaxies and stars) that lit up after the "Dark Ages" -- is pretty close to a lock. Stated another way, objects with redshifts indicative of ~100M years after the "Big Bang", or 13.6B years ago.

That would be just a stunning achievement.. I believe it will happen.
Click to expand...

source: NASA’s Webb Proves Galaxies Transformed the Early Universe
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Yesterday, the space kids reported they're pretty sure WHY (i.e., they confirmed WITH Webb observations of what was only THEORY before Jimbo was parked out at L2) the "Dark Ages" ended (the Universe become completely transparent to visible light).

Photo looks like any other deep field Webb image we've seen. Ya gotta read the narrative at the link to get the significance of image, and the accumulation of their findings.
Recall again that black holes were MATH predictions (nobody ever SAW one, only INDIRECTLY measured the predicted gravitational effects of one) that popped out of relativity theories ..

.. UNTIL some clever folks devised an experiment (posts #54, 86, 148, 256 in this thread) to photograph one (those cats will/did(?) win a Nobel Prize for that work) using an improvised telescope set up that created a "mirror" the SIZE of the WHOLE Earth.
They long theorized the first stars, in the first galaxies, AFTER the Big Bang but BEFORE the Dark Ages ended, was when/how these first celestial structures ionized (with the generated heat) the gas in early Universe.

It took less than a year of impressive Webb performance to look back FAR enough, to give the space kids info they DIDNT really have BEFORE Webb.

The new info summarized is in #564 -- there was more, older, bigger, hotter stuff in the early Universe than they THEORIZED. That CONFIRMATION solidified elements of the RE-ionization theory WITH observation.

Early on in this past year, the space kids (and nerdy followers like me) were "giddy as teenagers at a Taylor Swift concert" about the first things they were seeing out of Webb. They knew it wouldn't take long for new insights from Webb.

They were right. It didn't take long.

Its big milestone for Webb and the teams.

:thumbsup:
 
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amazinblue82 said:
source: NASA’s Webb Proves Galaxies Transformed the Early Universe
View attachment 601522

Yesterday, the spacekids reported they're pretty sure WHY (i.e., confirmed WITH Webb observations of what was only THEORY before Jimbo was parked out at L2) the "Dark Ages" ended (the Universe become completely transparent to visible light).

Photo looks like any other deep field Webb image we've seen. Ya gotta read the narrative at the link to get the significance of image, and the accumulation of their findings.
Recall again that black holes were MATH predictions (nobody ever SAW one, only INDIRECTLY measured the predicted gravitational efforts of one) that popped out of relativity theories ..

.. UNTIL some folks devised an experiment (posts #54, 86, 148, 256 in this thread) to photograph one (those cats will/did(?) win a Nobel Prize for that work) using an improvised telescope set up that created a "mirror" the SIZE of the WHOLE Earth.
They long theorized the first stars, in the first galaxies, AFTER the Big Bang but BEFORE the Dark Ages ended, was when'how these first celestial structures ionized (with heat) the gas in early Universe.

It took less than a year of impressive Webb performance to look back FAR enough, to give the space kids info they DIDNT really have BEFORE Webb.

The new info summarized is back in #564 -- there was more, older, bigger, hotter stuff in the early Universe than they THEORIZED. That CONFIRMATION solidified elements of the RE-ionization theory WITH observation.

Early on in the past year, the space kids (and nerdy followers like me) were "giddy as teens at a Taylor Swift concert" about the first things they were seeing out of Webb. They knew it wouldn't take long for new insights from Webb.

They were right. It didn't take long.

Its big milestone for Webb and the teams.

:thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Astonishing to see weekly updates on all that Jimbo has found. I am still an armchair astronomer, but Webb has really got my attention for it's capabilities. I've learned more in the last two years than I have in the forty-five before that, without even trying. I've been lucky that my news feeds were heavy on Webb in the year leading up to it's launch, and the year since. It's been cool to see it shine like they predicted, and then some. And it's barely gotten started, can't wait to see what else it finds.
 
LocuMob said:
Webb's getting a "buddy".

NASA Sending Adorable Little Buddy to Hang Out Next to the James Webb
Click to expand...
hmm... interesting.

wondering IF they wanted Webb to have this EUV detection capability but for whatever reason it wasnt/couldnt be built that way,

OR,

IR detection, as a technology tool, aint the best choice to find exoplanet evidence. UV detection isnt "new" but this little rig must have something special?

OR,
none of the above.

Hubble has always UV skills AND IR chops, but Webb's IR skills (it can do a little UV too) are best we've put up there.

This little cubesat rig cant have a big-a** mirror - its the size of a toaster - so something about it beats anything else we've got/ever had in EUV wavelengths??

any event, looking forward to this new box's capabilities.

cool!
 
New "old" news.

sources: Enceladus - Wikipedia, Researcher helps identify new evidence for habitability in ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus, Saturn's moon Enceladus has all the ingredients for life in its icy oceans. But is life there?

Uv2WLRCLryJYkrubjCaZW4.jpg

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rq8VeLYPLhzeSv5v7jYFFK-320-80.jpg

1686943827919.png

Old news first.

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn (one out of 124 [one hundred twenty four]), a frozen ball of ice with an ocean of salty, liquid water UNDER that ice.

800 million miles from the Sun, in the deep cold, with liquid water on (under the ice) it. And that water, under heat and pressure, is shooting through cracks in its surface into space.

Apparently, there seems to be more water on this little moon (less that 1% the size of earth) than in ALL the oceans here on earth. You can nerd out at the links above if Enceladus story isnt familiar.

Discovered 300 years ago. 6th largest moon of Saturn, only about 300 miles in diameter. it didn't distinguish itself (other than being really reflective because its covered in light colored ice) until closeup photos by Voyagers (closeup photos showed a detailed surface), the then by Cassini (photos and it flew through the plumes).

This little rascal had WATER vapor geysers shooting up from the surface (Cassini found them). Saturn's gravity repeatedly "squeezes" (i.e., tidal heating) the moon like a stress ball creating "heat" under the surface that keeps liquid water between the icy surface (minus 330 F temp) and the moon's rocky core.

1280px-Enceladus_Cold_Geyser_Model.svg.png


New news:

They just found the element phosphorus on Encelaldus (the rarest of the six elements [plus carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulphur are 97% of our boby mass] that make US up [and trees, rocks, frogs, bacteria, etc]) .

Only other place [e.g., planet or moon in solar system] we have found phosphorus is here on Earth. Its in our RNA, DNA, bones, teeth .. without it, we do not look/operate like we do.

Does that mean life on Enceladus? Who knows, maybe, maybe not. But now we know there is phosphorus mixed in with a ton of liquid water.

Its surely on THIS planet AND in each one of us. Made in some long dead stars that, at their death, spewed their "guts' into the interstellar dust out of which everything we see up there (and here) is made of.

But, actually finding phosphorus for first time in THIS solar system, a necessary ingredient for like as we know it, out there someplace OTHER than here -- that's kind of a big deal when trying to figure out where life as WE know it might be/have been.

The ingredients for ANY life (primitive and complex) as we know it ARE everywhere up there in space. So far, again, NOT discovered - yet - in the composition/mix for life like we have here.

The search continues.
 
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Webb gets a neighbor?

sources: James Webb Space Telescope will help Euclid spacecraft investigate dark energy and dark matter, ESA Science & Technology - Euclid

1688301645281.png


Yesterday, SpaceX launched the Euclid (named after the ancient Greek mathermetician and the inventor of geometry, died in 265 B.C.) telescope for the European Space Agency (ESA).

It too will be parked out at LaGrange 2 (I dont know "big" the area around L2 is but I am sure it they figured all that out as they are OTHER machines orbiting L2 already - e.g., managing the gravitational attraction BETWEEN the machines) like Webb is.

Euclid's mission (its ONLY, very specialized mission) is to study 10 billion+ LY away galaxies to develop a more definitive map of the Universe's structure/evolution. You can nerd out at the links and below.

Basically, everything we can see - that C-body in the garage, the family dog, ourselves in the mirror, the sun, the moon, the stars, EVERYTHING - is estimated to be ONLY 5% (five percent) of the matter and energy IN the WHOLE Universe.

What/Where is the other 95% (ninety five percent)? We are "swimming" in them both .. billions of LY away/ago, in our solar system, and one inch in front of our faces.

The dark energy and dark matter. They are two different things (we think), and are called "dark" because we can't see/detect directly them, we don't know exactly what they are, etc.,) but we know, indirectly, they're here/there/everywhere it seems.

Dark matter we can measure its gravitational effects. Dark energy is operating like an opposing "force" to gravity and seems to therefore be "fueling" the expansion of the Universe -- counter to gravity wanting to collapse it (i.e., the "Big_Crunch").

Again, scientists know dark matter and dark energy are there, but no good confirmation of "what" they are/they are made of.

Euclid is 100 times better (e.g., at what it can measure, how much of the sky at it can measure at one time, etc.) than Webb. The vision is Euclid will find something(s) interesting that Webb cannot, then they'll point Webb at that spot to do exploratory analysis that Euclid cannot.

Again, its pretty nerdy stuff. Half of it I dont get.

Will Euclid give us pretty pictures? Probably but may not awe us like Webb and Hubble do.

But finding out what is really "out there", the 95% we know painfully LITTLE about? I think that'll be pretty cool if we can do that.
 
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Webb .. after ONE year, and its latest pic. "Only" 390 LY away (recall nearest star to Earth is about 4 LY away).

A lot going on here so you can nerd out at the link.

source: Webb Celebrates First Year of Science With New Image

1689165329345.png


"The first anniversary image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture.

The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.

It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up.

Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red.

Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems."
 
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Turboomni said:
From NASA


Click to expand...


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This is heady stuff in that vid... knowledge-wise, its like an alligator attack in a swamp, with the alligator (i.e., the math) dragging the prey (i.e., me, an old Man with a Hat) into the deep water (i.e., the intellectual nuances). I have a headache now ...

Early today, I had to look up Katherine Freese's work (never heard of her before, video is hour long so consider that before you decide to go there) mentioned in 2007.
1689684848726.png


Using math, like Einstein did 100 years ago to predict "black holes" -- and then we finally observed them in nature recently -- Freese and her team predicted we could even have stars (i.e., their cores were dark matter, surrounded by hydrogen and helium) POWERED (i.e., the stars shined/avoided gravitational collapse to billions of years by dark matter "annihilations" in their cores, where nuclear fusion does that same thing in a "normal star" like the Sun) by "dark matter".

Remind ourselves we STILL don't know what DM is made of (e.g., perhaps a new kind of fundamental particle?), let alone HUMONGOUS stars POWERED by it INSTEAD of nuclear fusion. Freese calculated sixteen years ago what Webb observed in nature, in infrared, the past year.

These DM stars, if they were/are "real" (many would/could be the SUPER-MASSIVE black holes at every galaxy's center), were/are up to 1,000 (one thousand) times the mass of our Sun, and 10,000,000,000 (ten BILLION) times as bright, BUT 40% (forty percent) cooler surface temp than our Sun.

Big, bright (i.e., energetic), and cool (relatively) .. stunning material, and oh, mostly heavy metals from their spectra, and again with NO apparent nuclear fusion that goes/went on in "normal" stars we can see and understand like in our Sun.

The technology to confirm the math didn't exist until Webb got parked out at L2.

So they POSSIBLY found evidence of ancient, GIGANTIC, "dark matter stars" -- of which the age, composition via their spectra, mass, etc. -- lines up with Freese's whiteboard math from sixteen years ago.
Remind ourselves again, why we put Webb up there. The hope was to confirm what we think, and learn new stuff try to answer BIG questions "like are we alone?", "how did Universe get here?", and on and on.

The space kids are learning stuff with Webb in leaps and bounds .. and confirming we believe we found predicted "dark stars" is BIG NEWS. Too abstract/nerdy for most people to care about right now.

But what if we could figure out "how" to use "dark matter/energy" somehow someday? Its 95% of everything in the Universe, and seems to be why WE even exist (scientific explanation .. others have other views) in the first place.

I like dreamin' :).
 
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