First two images from JWT... A selfie... please log in to view this image An alignment... please log in to view this image https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ope-just-sent-back-its-first-image-of-itself/
It's crazy the amount of accuracy needed when you're zooming in on something 100 light years away. I remember with my old garden telescope trying to focus on Jupiter and Saturn and having to be ultra careful not to knock it out of alignment I know the James Webb telescope is a whole other ball game, but the levels of accuracy needed to do that are something else
Its great to see how much water is out there in the galaxy... If memory serves correct though proxima centauri is a dwarf star, so not really best place to look for earth-like life. To be in the habitable zone planets would have to be very close to the star and will likely be tidally locked (rotates at same speed it goes around the sun so same side faces sun all the time... Kinda like the moon is tidally locked with Earth, we always see the same side of the moon from the Earth). On a tidally locked planet one side will be a lot hotter than the other, if there is water on proxima d, most of it is probably as ice on the far side. Any water on the side of the planet facing the sun evaporates and drifts in atmosphere until it reaches far side and freezes. There's probably very little liquid water in the margins between the hot and cold side... You have a barren side that gets sunlight and a dark side full of glaciers. In the icy dark side water never evaporates so the dark side acts as a trap for all the planet's moisture. Even though a planet is in the goldilocks zone and has an average temperature capable of supporting liquid water doesn't mean it is good for water. It needs to be a planet which rotates, like the earth does. A tidally locked planet is not a good prospect for liquid water dependant life.
One of the things that interests me, is that we're always looking for life in the 'Goldilocks zone' but that's assuming that life will be carbon based, oxygen breathing life as we know it on Earth. The wonders of the universe are so mind boggling, that 'life' might exist in a guise that is completely beyond our current basis of understanding.
Yeah, it's pretty egotistical assuming all life would have same requirements as earth based life... But they do it because the only example of life they know uses water so they know liquid water CAN mean life. Life could be very different elsewhere but we may have a harder time recognizing it.
With the James Webb Telescope does that mean that our observable universe could become bigger, or is that not possible as light would not reach it, it just means we can observe better and closer up our current observable universe expanse?
Good question. I suppose the light needed to observe something would have to reach the object observing it. That said not all telescopes operate on light alone. We have Infared telescopes, Gamma ray telescopes and X ray telescopes. Designed to detect radiation, electromagnetic fields and gamma rays. I don't know if JWT has any of these attached, but my guess would be that it does, so that it can detect other signatures in space and then train its 'eye' on them to see if they are observable through other means.
You basically just described Brexit And regarding the James Webb telescope, theoretically it can't see further than 13.8 billion lightyears away, because the universe is 13.8 billion years old, so any light from further away wouldn't have had time to reach us yet.
Houston we have a problem: How big is the universe? Well, the observable universe is currently 93 billion light years across but it could go on forever... https://futurism.com/how-can-the-diameter-of-the-universe-the-age
This all comes down to an expanding universe and how we measure what is a 'stationary' object in a moving universe. Is the Galaxy we're observing moving, is it the universe expanding and the galaxy staying in it's normal position, or are we moving away from it. It's a bit like observing somebody inside a moving car. From their perspective they are stationary in the car, but the car is moving with them in it. Us as the bystander is observing them moving away from us. But the person in the car would observe themselves as being in the same position with us as the bystander moving away from them. It's a problem we can't escape as we are 'in' the universe and can't observe it from outside.
Everything we see is a replica of before and evolution is surely the same other than it moves forward a stage, expanse. Whether that be from monkey to man or the replication of how planets circle stars. Much like I believe in fate, one event occurs a multiple sequence of events but when is the start and end points. So for all we know we could be part of multiuniverse, we have no evidence of that, but if everything else is a replica, why not the universe to? Asking me to believe in the big bang is no different than asking me to believe in god surely? Afterall a big bang is merely an expansion, what's to suggest there is not multiple expansions, everything else in life is replicated. The only certain thing we know is the life and death of everything.
Yep, the theory of multiverse is something that really interests me. You can really lose your mind going down that rabbit hole though When you start considering that 'stuff' can exist outside of our understood laws of physics, then it opens the whole thing up to all sorts of possibilities. We also observe everything through the lens of our human brains and consciousness, so again the info available to us is only what we can perceive. As a basic premise, the observable universe could quite likely be just a drop in the ocean of what is actually out there (or in here)
Another thing to consider when looking for life is how feasible it is for us to explore and determine it exists on a planet/moon which theoretically has at least one of the components needed. For example gravity/extreme pressures, temperature or even just the fact there's no land, only liquid and gas, all of which make it virtually impossible to get close and personal. So maybe this new planet is not just about water, atmosphere etc but also its make-up being suitable for the ability to visit it at some point in the future?
I think they will eventually find a planet very similar to ours, if they haven't already, I'd just be interested to know what stage of evolution it is at. Afterall if the meteorite had never hit, would the human race have ever existed.
Earth has had a few mass extinctions, we might be the next with the way our climate is heading. A planet where dinosaurs weren't wiped out might look like Aber's version of the lizard people Where is aber btw ?
pig valves are used in humans already. But last only 10 years or so. This is the next step, but interesting.
