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First image from the Webb Space Telescope is in:



Full size: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7JJADTH9 ... FKSS0B.png
Webb homepage: https://webbtelescope.org/

All those dots are galaxies, each one with billions and billions of stars and planets, and that's just a portion of the sky comparable in size to a grain of sand held at arms length.

It's not often I get a sense of vertigo by just looking at a picture, but wow! Insert Douglas Adams quote here.

That's amazing.

I joked that the first image released today looked like an 80's bowling alley arcade carpet. I really dig the new head of NASA. Even though he's probably really up there in age, he has the curiosity and excitement for the new astronomy science as a college freshman. The talk of visual exoplanet exploration and time travel-esque peaks into billions of years past is actually viable. Also curious if NASA's recent joint effort with the Pentagon into UFO exploration is a smoke screen. Either way, as cynical as I am, and as much as I hate the US government wasting trillions of dollars...I want to believe. I want to be wowed.

DrEvil » Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:15 pm wrote:First image from the Webb Space Telescope is in:



Full size: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7JJADTH9 ... FKSS0B.png
Webb homepage: https://webbtelescope.org/

All those dots are galaxies, each one with billions and billions of stars and planets, and that's just a portion of the sky comparable in size to a grain of sand held at arms length.

It's not often I get a sense of vertigo by just looking at a picture, but wow! Insert Douglas Adams quote here.

And don't forget that science can only presently observe/detect less than 5% of the mass of the universe, the remaining 95% mass is "dark", meaning it is undetectable. Ahhh, if one only had 'eyes'' to see the 100%, it would be like looking in a mirror!

https://www.space.com/11642-dark-matter-dark-energy-4-percent-universe-panek.html

Yeah, figuring out stuff that doesn't interact with our little slice of the universe other than through gravity is tricky, but the Webb telescope can help shine some metaphorical light on it:
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space- ... er-science

There's probably a bunch of alien scientists trying to figure out what those last four percent of the universe are made out of, and alien hippies insisting that they've met extra-dimensional flesh puppets while tripping.

DrEvil » Wed Jul 13, 2022 12:24 am wrote:Yeah, figuring out stuff that doesn't interact with our little slice of the universe other than through gravity is tricky, but the Webb telescope can help shine some metaphorical light on it:
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space- ... er-science

There's probably a bunch of alien scientists trying to figure out what those last four percent of the universe are made out of, and alien hippies insisting that they've met extra-dimensional flesh puppets while tripping.

The best idea I have come across is that the 5% we know as matter is an aggregate of the finer vibrations of the quantum vacuum enegy, the zpe. In the same way as we see 2D standing waves on a flat surface (think sand on a flat drum surface subject to vibrations), then the particles of space are spherical (3D) standing waves. So dark energy is just the classical term for the omnipresent zpe, there is an omnipresent energy pervading all space, call it what you will, dark energy, quantum vacuum, ether, spirit, Obviously there is great debate about the name and the essential nature of this omnipresence, but for now we can all agree that there is only one omnipresence in which everything that exists, exists!

I disagree!

Or rather, I have no clue. But zpe is as good a candidate as anything else for the universe's expansion, but it doesn't account for dark matter, which, unless we're getting something seriously wrong, is a measurable quantity that we can observe indirectly by how it affects galaxies. It's not just some elusive field, there's something there, we just can't see it or interact with it (random side note: Alastair Reynolds has some cool aliens in 'Pushing Ice' that can only interact with our part of the universe through gravity. They talk by using gravity to move a ball around a fancy Ouija board).

As for the ultimate omnipresence thingamajig, I doubt we'll ever know. We will probably go extinct long before we're at a level of understanding where we can seriously investigate that.

It seems to me that zpe/dark energy logically must be omnipresent because nothing does not exist, at least not within the universe. Zpe is shown to exist in all space as a result of Casimir effect experiments. I imagine dark matter is just a denser aggregation of zpe due to standing waves.

Seriously, I understand what you are saying and my opinions are just that, not proven science.

Ah, now I get it. That makes sense. But what's causing the standing waves? Who or what is beating the drum?

This gives an awesome perspective of the scale of stuff and gives that image you posted some real context.

https://web.wwtassets.org/specials/2022/jwst-smacs/

^^Mind blown. I already know in an abstract sense that the universe is huge, but it's impossible to actually grasp it. Pictures like that give at least a small hint of what it's like.

DrEvil » Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:03 am wrote:Ah, now I get it. That makes sense. But what's causing the standing waves? Who or what is beating the drum?

It seems from my understanding of the Casimir effect, the zpe acts like em wave radiation and so depending on wavelengths, they would be absorbed or reflected by anything dense and of a significantly larger wavelength, in its path. Given all the matter of the universe the omnipresent zpe is radiating around in, it would eventually form patterns of standing waves at all its wavelengths. The first drumbeat was either the big bang or universal space has always been throbbing with energy radiation at all wavelengths.

Seems the problem is not as alarming as the headline reads, but sadly this will not be the last strike on the mirror.

Largest space telescope sustains ‘uncorrectable’ damage - A tiny space rock struck the James Webb Space Telescope harder than previously thought
19 Jul, 2022

A tiny meteoroid struck the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) between May 22 and May 24. According to a performance report issued by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency last week, the collision “caused uncorrectable change in the overall figure” of the observatory’s C3 mirror segment.

“The effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected.”

Although the telescope was designed to withstand such collisions, the report said the strike in May has “exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid.”

https://www.rt.com/news/559227-space-telescope-damaged-meteor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Apparently they're seeing more hits than expected, about once a month, so fingers crossed, because there's no way to go fix it if something important breaks.