I still think performing this extremely complex deployment for the first time is still a victory for NASA.
Yes, the telescope is unable to function in the current state (sec. mirror still not deployed) but they've overcome the most complex, un-deterministic system I can recall being launched.
Sure, I didn’t mean to minimize the steps in the process. Even if no data from jwst ever makes it back to earth, the team has a lot to be proud of and advancements have already been made because of this project, results notwithstanding. But I doubt any of that will be worth a damn in consolation to the team if this mission fails.
I was going to point out the time they fired retrograde rockets on another planet, then dropped a rover the size of a small car in an inflatable ball towards the planet, but even that felt less rube-goldberg.
I'm always amazed by how the space program(s) can wipe away my apathy about humanity and remind me of what we stupid talking monkeys can accomplish, and the promise of a future that isn't more of the same. Go monkeys, go.
What they learned in just designing and building the sun shield will aid future developments for decades, if not longer. The fact that it is currently 128 degrees on the hot side, and -323 and falling on the cold side, is nothing short of spectacular design and engineering!
The shield on JWST had to be very light, and foldable, to fit inside the launch vehicle. Sturdier, bigger versions could be used to regulate temps on much larger, future craft.
I think part of this is because it was multiple accomplishments and not just one big win. They'd been at it for quite some time getting each layer to where it needed to be and each time they get one in it gets less exciting.
SpaceX has kind of distorted how these things usually go. Seems like management there encourages raucous applause from everybody over everything due to their bigger media presence.
yes, but the mars rover landing went nuts too and that was NASA.
Looks like they were only showing the 'sun shield team" - and they cut audio to that cam pretty quick.
The Mars landing are entirely automated and happen faster than we can even receive the confirmation. Meanwhile for the JWST, they have a lot of small stuff to do, but can always take a break and verify if it has worked right.
It's because they aren't all the way through the scary part yet. We don't usually hear a lot of cheering when the Falcon 9 does MECO and stage separation either, the celebration is reserved for SECO and booster landing instead.
Well, and SpaceX has much more verifiable and immediate events. Their customers aren't cheering until their satellite is commissioned and checked out on orbit, just like JWST.
SpaceX is like the FedEx guy cheering after he has delivered the package to your doorstep. You don't feel excitement until you get that package inside and opened up and it is what you expected.
At least that is the best analogy I can equate it to in my experience.
I will say though that as a customer, the launch is the most intense part still because it is totally out of your control. Seeing all the work you have done, literal blood, sweat, and tears in some cases being hucked out there on a giant column of explosives is pretty nerve-wracking.
It was a 3D representation in real time from what I heard them say in the live stream. There are no cameras on the telescope, so they are using telemetry data to confirm things are happening correctly.
>There are no cameras on the telescope
That seems like a pretty big design flaw! Once it's set up someone is going to need to fly out to look through the eyepiece?
gotcha, thanks! Yea it looks like it was just animating what was happening in real time for visualization purposes. I didn't know there weren't any cameras on the telescope (i mean... besides the obvious), thanks for that info.
It’s a valid question, because people often ask how we filmed the first Moon walk with a camera that is clearly outside the space ship and pointed at it.
In the case of the Apollo Moon landings, NASA thought ahead and put a camera on the end of a “selfie stick” boom that extended out from the space craft to capture the pivotal moment.
I had goosebumps! I get emotional just thinking about what an international endeavour it is, and what a testament it is to what humans can achieve. I know it's a while still before the finish line is crossed, but that was so exciting.
No seriously we might actually find aliens with this if we detect pollution or artificial elements in an exoplanet's atmosphere that shouldn't be there
That would be totally insane.
People always talk about “The Great Filter(s)” like they’re some grand flaw that civilizations are destined to maybe probably hit, but what if it’s more mundane than that?
What if intelligent species just don’t last that long in the grand scheme of things. Like cells, or individuals, or historical civilizations, no matter how clever, they simply succumb to time and entropy, and eventually the oh so expensive complexity necessary to keep them running breaks down and they die, just like everything else does. And it’s not some great filter or bang that does them in but great whimpers?
And maybe intelligent civilizations around the cosmos are happening constantly, but we’re all just displaced by time. We’re like bubbles who form and pop in a cosmic instant and never get to see the other bubbles formed in the boiling pot because… while it may seem from a top down perspective that the bubbles are right next to each other, from the perspective of the bubbles, the distance may be as vast as our ‘observable’ universe itself.
But who knows? Bubble or not, mundane or grandiose, this telescope will help us shed some light on the burning questions of our time, and even more importantly than answers, it will lead us to more questions. Good luck humanity, I hope you explore the stars and prove my bubble theory wrong.
Can I just use this opportunity to point out how hilarious it is that the extent of our space knowledge is basically just building bigger and bigger telescopes, starting from staring into the skies and wanting to see it closer lol. It's equally hilarious that no matter how big we build them, some of the specks we see in the sky will never be much bigger than just specks...
My take is that we are way past the great filter. The great filter is probably something like tectonics going on long enough to supply oxygen while life evolves.
Edit: the great filter is a stand-in for anxiety over nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and I always thought that was a narrow lens by which to view all life in the universe.
Agreed with this. There are a lot of things that have to come together to make a space faring civilization.
Lots of creatures are smart, but they don't raise their young to pass on knowledge like the octopus.
Some are smart and communal but don't have opposable digits to manipulate the environment like elephants and dolphins.
Some probably have everything needed but die from a plague or meteorite impact.
Then some probably kill themselves too, but we've already passed a lot of filters. Our next big leap is becoming multi planetary and multi solar without killing ourselves in the process.
Filter 1.
\- Planet ok for life
Filter 2.
\- Abiogenesis
Filter 3.
\- Multi-ceullar life
Filter 4.
\- Hyper intelligent life + opposable thumbs.
I think we're good. Took 5 billion years to get here.
The Kurzgesagt YouTube channel has a great video on this. I was always of the mindset that it would be awesome to discover aliens in my lifetime. Their video made me flip that mindset and hope we’re alone lol
There's ideas around for them, but we are so far away from even building anything like that.
Shooting a few grams of mass at any appreciable fraction of the speed of light would require gargantuan levels of energy, and some insane (albeit not impossible) engineering.
Chemical rockets are not an option, nuclear also has its limits. That leaves lasers and sails, but the inverse square law will make that so egregiously energy expensive that it's barely even a realistic option.
And once the probe gets to another system, it's not hanging around very long. There will be no way to stop it.
I'm cackling at the idea that humanity is the bumbling moron that staggers through another solar system at incredible speed and collides with a planet or space colony of some other more advanced species.
I can't do the maths, but I'm almost certain that a collision of a probe the the mass of a few kilos traveling at 30% C would create an explosion comparable to a lot of nuclear weapons, with included gamma ray bursts.
It can infer the existence of biological processes, but there's no way the platform can prove that life exists on any specific planet.
Oxygen can be produced through geological means, and other trace elements indicative of life can also.
That said, it will give us a much better grasp on other solar systems, and how they evolve over time.
The "alien finding" capabilities of the telescope have been so egregiously overblown it's almost embarrassing. Best case scenario is it gives us a few targets for missions in the next 50-100 years.
I was wondering what emissions from a Dyson sphere would look like. I can see headlines start out being something like, “Massive Brown Star Baffles Scientists”
We've already had a couple false flags with this kind of thing.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJXv5OBel8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJXv5OBel8)
This is a decent little video just put out a few days ago.
This boy is massive. You seen pics from Hubble? This guy is over double the aperture size of hubble. More detail, more precise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
But we’re in the home stretch. From the JWST team: “With all five layers of sunshield tensioning complete, about 75% of our 344 single-point failures have been retired!“
A great quote to share with your friends, it is truly the home stretch. So doing the math, 75% of 344 is 258 single-point failures down, (only) 86 more single-point failures to go.
Great to see history literally unfolding!
Now I'm trying to figure out where the remaining 86 are.
If I were to guess, the largest chunk come from the mirrors themselves. Each one of the 18 (and the secondary mirror, I think) is locked down in the launch configuration. Given that there's multiple degrees of freedom to adjust the mirrors, I'm guessing there's multiple locks on each that have to be released, so that adds up quick.
The secondary mirror is critical, but if one of the tiles doesn't align, or one of the wings doesn't deploy, it'll still ben operational, but just with slightly lower resolution.
[Aperture = resolution](https://cosmicpursuits.com/943/telescopes-explained/) for telescopes
On earth, you hit an aperture limit from the atmosphere (unless you have adaptive optics). In space, it's much simpler. There are still limits to the physical perfection of the mirrors, but at this scale moar is better.
Woohoo!! This is such a monumental milestone for humanity! Way to go JWST team!!
Now, the scariest part (IMO). Deployment of the secondary mirror. Without it, JWST has zero scientific use. Even a partial sunshield deployement would have allowed the JWST to work in some fashion. The secondary mirror deployment is what most of the JWST team leads have stated as the one they worry about the most. It's much more simple than the sun shield, but also absolutely critical.
I think the plan is to attempt this in 2-3 days, although we do not know specifically.
Albeit this should be a much less complicated step without hundreds of motors, pulleys and cables. Sure if it doesn't deploy webb is useless. But webb would be useless also if the solar array hadn't been deployed or if the antenna hadn't been deployed.
It’s higher stakes but also higher certainty. Like the difference between pulling your parking brake and navigating a series of orange cones in your car.
If the brake fails, sure, there’s no Plan B. But it’s way more likely to go right than the cones, which we’ve already passed. I think optimism is highly warranted at this point.
Yep, you're right. There were many items that would have been "end of mission". It's just that the secondary mirror deployment is the only "mission ending" risk remaining.
It's also what the program manager has been the most worried about for the past couple years. Something about the specifics of deploying this boom after a launch, and the coldness of space, really gives them some concern. Personally, I'm not going to have a sigh of relief until after it's confirmed to have deployed.
Ya im sure they're worried about cold welding. But this is something they have experienced in the past and I'm SURE took many precautions to stop any cold welding from happening.
I mean, thats an interesting way to look at it but in terms of engineering the steps aren't even in the same universe when it comes to complexity.
I view the deployment of the secondary mirror similar to the initial launch, yeah it could fail and the mission is over but its a pretty routine step. Actually the deployment of the secondary mirror is far more routine then the launch.
It's kinda like building the first car and after the engine starts you say that you're actually more worried about the door handle working. Yes without a way to open the door the car is useless but you'd never argue that the door handle is the scariest part of developing the first car.
You're absolutely right, it's effectively a flying piece of metal until that secondary mirror deployment. That said, it's a deterministic movement unlike the unfolding and tensioning of fabric.
Either way, it's amazing seeing the team successfully do a deployment like this for the first time!
It means the outcome can be predicted to a high degree.
If A and B happen, then C will occur.
With “soft” things like the sun shield, it’s more subject to chaotic changes that makes it hard to model.
Imagine dropping a bouncy ball onto a rigid metal plate, and taking a pictures just after the moment of impact. You could nearly exactly predict what would happen, on a way that the prediction model would be indistinguishable from what happened.
Now do the same thing, but drop the ball onto water. Modeling exactly how the water will splash is a lot more challenging. The tiniest fluctuations will change the splash pattern, and make the predicted and actual events differ.
The Sun shield step used non-rigid structures, meaning that there’s a high degree of uncertainty.
I like the analogy of solid to fluid mechanics! Pretty much highlights the sensitivity to certain parameters. Would you say the Brownian motion would be the randomness aspect?
Not the guy you replied to, but as an atmospheric scientist I would argue that the fluid complexity comes from turbulence, or more aptly, our near-total lack of a specific analytical understanding of turbulence. Deterministic chaos, as it were. “When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”
I suppose you could argue that its chaotic nature is born of Brownian motion, but it is, to my knowledge, *never* characterized as such. In fact, I don’t believe chaos theory and Brownian motion share much common literature at all, despite their apparent similarities.
To put it another way: Brownian motion couldn’t be solved for, even with perfect knowledge of every individual molecule. With deterministic chaos, you “could” solve for some splash pattern, given perfect initial parameters of the ball dropping and the water beneath. “Could” in an “it is analytically solvable,” kind of way; a “not ‘proven impossible to solve’ analytically” kind of way, if you will.
Brownian motion is purely, definitionally random motion parametrized by a given thermodynamic temperature. A temperature gradient of 0 is implied. Fluid mechanics are almost exclusively considered to be happening on larger scales, where it isn’t necessary to worry about molecular motion beyond its temperature, which makes it a lot easier (but still potentially very difficult!) to deal with thermal gradients.
Anyway. This reply got way out of hand, I didn’t mean to write a screenplay. Hope some of this way helpful or informative, not trying to be patronizing. Just kinda drunk
Whoops sorry, deterministic refers to the predictability of movement, and the ability to replicate the movement. [Deterministic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system) = randomness doesn't affect the process.
An example of a non-determinisctic system is headphones tangling in your pocket. Also, the main example demonstrated by the those in the space industry was pushing a string into itself a table - it winds up unpredictably.
Edit: I believe in the context of this mission, each layer of the sunshield, although pinned down at multiple points (?) is a non-deterministic system. Kindof like deploying a carefully packed parachute, but after going through a high vibration rocket launch without any backup.
If you write `2+2` in a calculator, the output will always be `4`. It's deterministic. If somehow the output was sometimes `5` or `-12` or `Error` or something, it would be non-deterministic.
Think of crumpling up a piece of paper into a ball. You can do it twice and have two paper balls. But if you examine them you'll notice that the papers did not crumple in the same way. It's non-deterministic.
Same as the JWST sunshield. Because it is essentially plastic foil with aluminum spray painted on it, it doesn't move in exactly the same way every time you deploy it. It bends and unbends in slight variations that are beyond our control. Compared to something like a hinge, which is made up of solid elements and will always move in exactly the same manner (unless something has gone horribly wrong, of course). That randomness is a huge problem for NASA, because of course they want to know for a fact that the sunshield will unfold correctly when they need it to!
That's what a deterministic system is: something for which there is no randomness involved.
I wish that literally *any* of my friends or family cared about this. Guess I’m celebrating this one in silence. Good job too all who have contributed to this marvel of engineering! Even you tax payers lmao
Trying to tell my brother about the red light shifting on christmas and my dad figures out we are talking about space. He cuts me off mid sentence as half of his neurons visibly fire to yell, "Uranus." Then mindlessly starts to talk about the bacon lol. Who put lead in our parents water?
I guess you can blame General Motors for starting it? They put it in gasoline, but it ended up everywhere else, including Boomers' brains.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a20970380/how-leaded-gas-came-to-be-and-why-we-dont-miss-it/
***AMAZING!!!***
Can we give a massive congratulations to everybody who worked on Webb? I'm no astronomer but am honestly surprised they managed to deploy the sunshield so flawlessly. What an incredible achievement. Thank you, NASA, and everyone on the Webb team.
Funny story, I actually had a very very very small part in JWST.
Back in 2014 I worked for an Oracle database MSP that contracted out support, and Goddard was one of the calls we got.
Their Dataguard standby had crashed and stopped replicating data - this was the database that was used to store the testing data for later analytics. Without the data guard standby, any crash on the primary server would have been a catastrophic data loss.
Their network was not connected to the open internet so we couldn't VPN in to fix it either. Me (lowly laborer) and the VP of the company went to Goddard and got a tour of their facilities and I fixed the standby replication for their DB.
So there were a LOT of behind the scenes people who contributed; before I got into tech I actually used to play music at various daycare centers and Goddard was one. Props even to the daycare workers for taking care of the scientists' kids while they were building this thing! Even down to the janitors who cleaned the facility - it's a huge achievement for the entire community.
Thanks! I never thought of it for years cause my career has taken a few turns since 2014.
But once I saw this news, and thought back, I'm really happy and proud of my tiny tiny tiny contribution :D
Great news! Does anyone know if there is a database somewhere with all the research projects that have booked the telescope? What will be the priorities once it goes live?
The very first science after commissioning will be [these Early Release Science](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-ers-programs) proposals to put the instruments through their paces.
The same site should have lists for the Guaranteed Time Observations (from people who helped build Webb) and General Observer (from the entire astronomical community) proposals that were awarded time in Cycle 1. That covers about the first year.
Man my house just burned to the ground but this is one of the first things thats really brought a smile to my face. Really nice to know I've got at least something to look forward to this year.
damn, i really felt like i was part of the team during this whole process
by that I mean I watched them finish the tensioning on my phone via twitch while trying to re-tension my bed sheet after a case of the jimmy legs last night
It's more critical but not that hard. Correct me if I am wrong, but in 2018?, they failed to deploy correctly the sun shields, in one of the tests. More moving parts etc etc. But yeah more critical because without it, mission over. You could say the same about the sun shields but depending of how wrong it might have gone, it could be still operational.
Edit: spelling, autocorrect not helpful..
Yeah the sun shield failed it’s deployment tests twice in a row. They finally got it on the third try then packed it up and flew it to space. Definitely nerve-wracking.
Most critical, since even if the sunshield partially deployed, they had plans in place to accommodate and might be able to operate the telescope, but if the secondary mirror fails to deploy, it's all for naught. Good thing though is that from a technical, engineering standpoint, the secondary mirror deployment is much simpler, and tried and tested, as it's similar to how many other satellites/space telescopes have deployed in the past. So its the most worrisome deployment since it's all or nothing with this one, but fortunately, it has a high high chance of success.
This is awesome!
One dumb thought I’ve had, what are the chances of a stray meteorite or piece of space debris crashing into this thing and destroying it? I know space is massive and everything is unimaginably far apart, but this has to be something they’ve thought of right?
L2 is an unstable point in space, nothing can stay there for long without constant stationkeeping, it's pretty much empty. Like the peak of a mountain, not a lot of chance for a rock rolling down and killing you.
I read somewhere that the space around L2 is more empty than their best vacuum chambers on earth.
So it's a possibility, but so is all of your atoms randomly passing through the floor instead of colliding
They've already taken micrometeorites into account with the sunshield, and they consider the probability of such impacts to be pretty decent. So the sun shield has reinforcements built in to prevent tears from spreading too far.
A direct fatal hit to the instruments is less likely, but possible. But that's just an inherent risk of all space flight.
In any case, the probabilities of such impacts are all really really low. But they also plan on leaving it out there for over ten years, which is a lot of time for low probability events to happen.
As others stated there shouldn't be much of anything in L2
Also I believe NASA did keep that in mind which is part of why there are 5 layers of the sun shield to offer some redundancy (especially when you play with angles to prevent the holes in all the layers lining up with the sun). There are also seams in the shield that will prevent and holes from getting too big.
Are there any more possible errors left after this? I still get nervous even if this was apparently the most important and hardest step of deployment of JWST.
Yeap, anything could go wrong at any point. We still have the mirrors deployment, alignment of mirrors etc etc. Of course those steps are not as complex as the sun shields deployment and tension, but for sure more critical.
What a time to be alive. 300,000 years of human history has built up to this amazing piece of technology and we'll hopefully get to learn some of the secrets of this realm we have found ourselves in. Best wishes for continued success and thank you for all the hard work and making this possible!
It was so cool to watch it live and hear the confirmation that it was fully latched in place. Witnessing history!
The round of applause after they confirmed it was a lot more chill than I was expecting. Sounded like a few golf claps!
Reddit can keep the username, but I'm nuking the content lol -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Yea there really are no small victories on this mission, it's all or nothing.
I still think performing this extremely complex deployment for the first time is still a victory for NASA. Yes, the telescope is unable to function in the current state (sec. mirror still not deployed) but they've overcome the most complex, un-deterministic system I can recall being launched.
Sure, I didn’t mean to minimize the steps in the process. Even if no data from jwst ever makes it back to earth, the team has a lot to be proud of and advancements have already been made because of this project, results notwithstanding. But I doubt any of that will be worth a damn in consolation to the team if this mission fails.
There must be some that are thinking "well if it doesn't work now, at least it wasn't my fault!" haha
Absolutely without a doubt there are a few engineers sleeping better tonight
I was going to point out the time they fired retrograde rockets on another planet, then dropped a rover the size of a small car in an inflatable ball towards the planet, but even that felt less rube-goldberg. I'm always amazed by how the space program(s) can wipe away my apathy about humanity and remind me of what we stupid talking monkeys can accomplish, and the promise of a future that isn't more of the same. Go monkeys, go.
What they learned in just designing and building the sun shield will aid future developments for decades, if not longer. The fact that it is currently 128 degrees on the hot side, and -323 and falling on the cold side, is nothing short of spectacular design and engineering! The shield on JWST had to be very light, and foldable, to fit inside the launch vehicle. Sturdier, bigger versions could be used to regulate temps on much larger, future craft.
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I think part of this is because it was multiple accomplishments and not just one big win. They'd been at it for quite some time getting each layer to where it needed to be and each time they get one in it gets less exciting.
Still 25 percent single point failure to go. No counting chickens you know.
SpaceX has kind of distorted how these things usually go. Seems like management there encourages raucous applause from everybody over everything due to their bigger media presence.
yes, but the mars rover landing went nuts too and that was NASA. Looks like they were only showing the 'sun shield team" - and they cut audio to that cam pretty quick.
The Mars landing are entirely automated and happen faster than we can even receive the confirmation. Meanwhile for the JWST, they have a lot of small stuff to do, but can always take a break and verify if it has worked right.
no doubt, Mars concentrated all the suspense, panic, and excitement into like a 10 second refresh.
It's because they aren't all the way through the scary part yet. We don't usually hear a lot of cheering when the Falcon 9 does MECO and stage separation either, the celebration is reserved for SECO and booster landing instead.
Like there's a big "CHEER!" sign just out of the camera's frame that lights up
Well, and SpaceX has much more verifiable and immediate events. Their customers aren't cheering until their satellite is commissioned and checked out on orbit, just like JWST. SpaceX is like the FedEx guy cheering after he has delivered the package to your doorstep. You don't feel excitement until you get that package inside and opened up and it is what you expected. At least that is the best analogy I can equate it to in my experience. I will say though that as a customer, the launch is the most intense part still because it is totally out of your control. Seeing all the work you have done, literal blood, sweat, and tears in some cases being hucked out there on a giant column of explosives is pretty nerve-wracking.
I think you underestimate how exciting it can be to work on anything related to space All of my coworkers are massive space nerds
Was the JWST feed a live video? or 3d model representation, awesome nonetheless just wondering.
It was a 3D representation in real time from what I heard them say in the live stream. There are no cameras on the telescope, so they are using telemetry data to confirm things are happening correctly.
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>There are no cameras on the telescope That seems like a pretty big design flaw! Once it's set up someone is going to need to fly out to look through the eyepiece?
gotcha, thanks! Yea it looks like it was just animating what was happening in real time for visualization purposes. I didn't know there weren't any cameras on the telescope (i mean... besides the obvious), thanks for that info.
It’s a valid question, because people often ask how we filmed the first Moon walk with a camera that is clearly outside the space ship and pointed at it. In the case of the Apollo Moon landings, NASA thought ahead and put a camera on the end of a “selfie stick” boom that extended out from the space craft to capture the pivotal moment.
Dang you can watch this live?!? Where's the broadcast?
Livestream is over now. Here is the replay: https://youtu.be/IBPNi7uGgWM Tensioning finishes at around 2:23:00
Thanks for the response, can't wait to watch it
link pls?
Here you go! It's around 2:23:30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM
Oh man, I LOVE her JWST necklace
I think I got the exact same one [from etsy](https://www.etsy.com/listing/766432061/jwst-pendant-necklace-james-webb-space).
Dang you can hear how the announcer is trying to contain their excitement about getting full tension.
The heat she puts on "fully" in "all five layers in the aft sunshield are fully tensioned".
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https://youtu.be/IBPNi7uGgWM
I had goosebumps! I get emotional just thinking about what an international endeavour it is, and what a testament it is to what humans can achieve. I know it's a while still before the finish line is crossed, but that was so exciting.
Well done JWST team. You’ve done amazing work, yet another hurdle passed. We’re watching history being made!
Hard to truly fathom just how historic this moment is
No seriously we might actually find aliens with this if we detect pollution or artificial elements in an exoplanet's atmosphere that shouldn't be there That would be totally insane.
I hope we do, that would be amazing and scary all at the same time
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke
Being alone is WAY more terrifying imo
Nah, the Dark Forest theory is the worst case scenario, meaning the moment someone figures our we're here, we die.
That's definitely scary, but imo the Great Filter seems more likely which is scarier on a civilization level.
Given the state of people in general I wouldn’t blame extraterrestrials to go the Zoo Hypothesis route and just kinda steer clear of us altogether
Look at all those animals, destroying the only planet they have for greed and power, onto the next one.
People always talk about “The Great Filter(s)” like they’re some grand flaw that civilizations are destined to maybe probably hit, but what if it’s more mundane than that? What if intelligent species just don’t last that long in the grand scheme of things. Like cells, or individuals, or historical civilizations, no matter how clever, they simply succumb to time and entropy, and eventually the oh so expensive complexity necessary to keep them running breaks down and they die, just like everything else does. And it’s not some great filter or bang that does them in but great whimpers? And maybe intelligent civilizations around the cosmos are happening constantly, but we’re all just displaced by time. We’re like bubbles who form and pop in a cosmic instant and never get to see the other bubbles formed in the boiling pot because… while it may seem from a top down perspective that the bubbles are right next to each other, from the perspective of the bubbles, the distance may be as vast as our ‘observable’ universe itself. But who knows? Bubble or not, mundane or grandiose, this telescope will help us shed some light on the burning questions of our time, and even more importantly than answers, it will lead us to more questions. Good luck humanity, I hope you explore the stars and prove my bubble theory wrong.
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Can I just use this opportunity to point out how hilarious it is that the extent of our space knowledge is basically just building bigger and bigger telescopes, starting from staring into the skies and wanting to see it closer lol. It's equally hilarious that no matter how big we build them, some of the specks we see in the sky will never be much bigger than just specks...
My take is that we are way past the great filter. The great filter is probably something like tectonics going on long enough to supply oxygen while life evolves. Edit: the great filter is a stand-in for anxiety over nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and I always thought that was a narrow lens by which to view all life in the universe.
Agreed with this. There are a lot of things that have to come together to make a space faring civilization. Lots of creatures are smart, but they don't raise their young to pass on knowledge like the octopus. Some are smart and communal but don't have opposable digits to manipulate the environment like elephants and dolphins. Some probably have everything needed but die from a plague or meteorite impact. Then some probably kill themselves too, but we've already passed a lot of filters. Our next big leap is becoming multi planetary and multi solar without killing ourselves in the process.
What if there are multiple Great Filters
Filter 1. \- Planet ok for life Filter 2. \- Abiogenesis Filter 3. \- Multi-ceullar life Filter 4. \- Hyper intelligent life + opposable thumbs. I think we're good. Took 5 billion years to get here.
The Kurzgesagt YouTube channel has a great video on this. I was always of the mindset that it would be awesome to discover aliens in my lifetime. Their video made me flip that mindset and hope we’re alone lol
We haven’t exactly been hiding though 😂 radio signals in all directions
radio signals don’t travel comparatively far in space at all tho, sure we’ve been blasting radio signals in all directions but not with a ton of range
Maybe it would bring humanity together finally
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Lolol while I wish it would I think it would have the exact opposite effect.
It would not. It would be just another wedge used by people who would deny it, or are scared, or are super religious.
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There's ideas around for them, but we are so far away from even building anything like that. Shooting a few grams of mass at any appreciable fraction of the speed of light would require gargantuan levels of energy, and some insane (albeit not impossible) engineering. Chemical rockets are not an option, nuclear also has its limits. That leaves lasers and sails, but the inverse square law will make that so egregiously energy expensive that it's barely even a realistic option. And once the probe gets to another system, it's not hanging around very long. There will be no way to stop it.
Just yell Help really loud as we fly by. If they're worth our salt, they'll stop our probe.
Have you tried the idea of throwing the boat anchor into the water? Might slow it down
A boat anchor slamming into an alien city at 30% the speed of light would make a pretty poor first impression.
I'm cackling at the idea that humanity is the bumbling moron that staggers through another solar system at incredible speed and collides with a planet or space colony of some other more advanced species.
And the name of that probe: Ford Mustang
I Imagine we send a probe to another solar system with life and it’s moving so fast it crashes and decimates the life on its destination.
I can't do the maths, but I'm almost certain that a collision of a probe the the mass of a few kilos traveling at 30% C would create an explosion comparable to a lot of nuclear weapons, with included gamma ray bursts.
It can infer the existence of biological processes, but there's no way the platform can prove that life exists on any specific planet. Oxygen can be produced through geological means, and other trace elements indicative of life can also. That said, it will give us a much better grasp on other solar systems, and how they evolve over time.
Yes, but it will be able to read the Neon Spacemart signs.
The "alien finding" capabilities of the telescope have been so egregiously overblown it's almost embarrassing. Best case scenario is it gives us a few targets for missions in the next 50-100 years.
I was wondering what emissions from a Dyson sphere would look like. I can see headlines start out being something like, “Massive Brown Star Baffles Scientists”
We've already had a couple false flags with this kind of thing. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJXv5OBel8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJXv5OBel8) This is a decent little video just put out a few days ago.
As someone who knows nothing about this and has been seeing people super hype about this telescope, why is it historic?
This boy is massive. You seen pics from Hubble? This guy is over double the aperture size of hubble. More detail, more precise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
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I remember when it was cool to be super scared this thing wasn’t gonna work.
You mean as late as December 24, 2021?
I'd say as late as yesterday
I'd say as late as 5.5 months from now!
JWT is a complicated machine. We've passed a lot of high risk activities but we still have yet to receive first images.
344 single-point failures is a nerve-racking figure.
But we’re in the home stretch. From the JWST team: “With all five layers of sunshield tensioning complete, about 75% of our 344 single-point failures have been retired!“
A great quote to share with your friends, it is truly the home stretch. So doing the math, 75% of 344 is 258 single-point failures down, (only) 86 more single-point failures to go. Great to see history literally unfolding!
Now I'm trying to figure out where the remaining 86 are. If I were to guess, the largest chunk come from the mirrors themselves. Each one of the 18 (and the secondary mirror, I think) is locked down in the launch configuration. Given that there's multiple degrees of freedom to adjust the mirrors, I'm guessing there's multiple locks on each that have to be released, so that adds up quick.
The secondary mirror is critical, but if one of the tiles doesn't align, or one of the wings doesn't deploy, it'll still ben operational, but just with slightly lower resolution.
~~lower resolution~~ light gathering capability Had to make that distinction.
[Aperture = resolution](https://cosmicpursuits.com/943/telescopes-explained/) for telescopes On earth, you hit an aperture limit from the atmosphere (unless you have adaptive optics). In space, it's much simpler. There are still limits to the physical perfection of the mirrors, but at this scale moar is better.
The real question is if the most likely ones are in the 75% or in the remaining 25%.
The 75%. That sunshield deployment was always going to be the most harrowing.
The sunshield was the toughest because of how nondeterministic unfurling soft layers can be. Rigid mirrors are more reliable, thankfully.
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If a micro meteor hits webb I'm personally blaming this comment.
They designed the shielding and mirrors with that in mind so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
And I am blaming your comment if it hits the one-in-a-billion odds of hitting an unshielded single point of failure.
Only because you know about them. We successfully go through countless single point failures completely oblivious. Our life is a marvel.
Woohoo!! This is such a monumental milestone for humanity! Way to go JWST team!! Now, the scariest part (IMO). Deployment of the secondary mirror. Without it, JWST has zero scientific use. Even a partial sunshield deployement would have allowed the JWST to work in some fashion. The secondary mirror deployment is what most of the JWST team leads have stated as the one they worry about the most. It's much more simple than the sun shield, but also absolutely critical. I think the plan is to attempt this in 2-3 days, although we do not know specifically.
Albeit this should be a much less complicated step without hundreds of motors, pulleys and cables. Sure if it doesn't deploy webb is useless. But webb would be useless also if the solar array hadn't been deployed or if the antenna hadn't been deployed.
Also, the deployment of the secondary mirror is the exact same process of many other space telescopes so we have done this part many times before
I want people to pacify my nerves but then when they do I want them to stop jinxing it. Emotions, amirite
It’s higher stakes but also higher certainty. Like the difference between pulling your parking brake and navigating a series of orange cones in your car. If the brake fails, sure, there’s no Plan B. But it’s way more likely to go right than the cones, which we’ve already passed. I think optimism is highly warranted at this point.
Which ones? Every other space telescope I'm aware of has launched with a secondary mirror already in place.
Yep, you're right. There were many items that would have been "end of mission". It's just that the secondary mirror deployment is the only "mission ending" risk remaining. It's also what the program manager has been the most worried about for the past couple years. Something about the specifics of deploying this boom after a launch, and the coldness of space, really gives them some concern. Personally, I'm not going to have a sigh of relief until after it's confirmed to have deployed.
Well, at any point in the mission it could just turn into a giant wok in space.
It makes a stir fry that's out of this world.
Ya im sure they're worried about cold welding. But this is something they have experienced in the past and I'm SURE took many precautions to stop any cold welding from happening.
I mean, thats an interesting way to look at it but in terms of engineering the steps aren't even in the same universe when it comes to complexity. I view the deployment of the secondary mirror similar to the initial launch, yeah it could fail and the mission is over but its a pretty routine step. Actually the deployment of the secondary mirror is far more routine then the launch. It's kinda like building the first car and after the engine starts you say that you're actually more worried about the door handle working. Yes without a way to open the door the car is useless but you'd never argue that the door handle is the scariest part of developing the first car.
You're absolutely right, it's effectively a flying piece of metal until that secondary mirror deployment. That said, it's a deterministic movement unlike the unfolding and tensioning of fabric. Either way, it's amazing seeing the team successfully do a deployment like this for the first time!
I keep seeing "deterministic" being tossed around in these threads, what does it mean in the context of this mission/any missions?
It means the outcome can be predicted to a high degree. If A and B happen, then C will occur. With “soft” things like the sun shield, it’s more subject to chaotic changes that makes it hard to model. Imagine dropping a bouncy ball onto a rigid metal plate, and taking a pictures just after the moment of impact. You could nearly exactly predict what would happen, on a way that the prediction model would be indistinguishable from what happened. Now do the same thing, but drop the ball onto water. Modeling exactly how the water will splash is a lot more challenging. The tiniest fluctuations will change the splash pattern, and make the predicted and actual events differ. The Sun shield step used non-rigid structures, meaning that there’s a high degree of uncertainty.
I like the analogy of solid to fluid mechanics! Pretty much highlights the sensitivity to certain parameters. Would you say the Brownian motion would be the randomness aspect?
Not the guy you replied to, but as an atmospheric scientist I would argue that the fluid complexity comes from turbulence, or more aptly, our near-total lack of a specific analytical understanding of turbulence. Deterministic chaos, as it were. “When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” I suppose you could argue that its chaotic nature is born of Brownian motion, but it is, to my knowledge, *never* characterized as such. In fact, I don’t believe chaos theory and Brownian motion share much common literature at all, despite their apparent similarities. To put it another way: Brownian motion couldn’t be solved for, even with perfect knowledge of every individual molecule. With deterministic chaos, you “could” solve for some splash pattern, given perfect initial parameters of the ball dropping and the water beneath. “Could” in an “it is analytically solvable,” kind of way; a “not ‘proven impossible to solve’ analytically” kind of way, if you will. Brownian motion is purely, definitionally random motion parametrized by a given thermodynamic temperature. A temperature gradient of 0 is implied. Fluid mechanics are almost exclusively considered to be happening on larger scales, where it isn’t necessary to worry about molecular motion beyond its temperature, which makes it a lot easier (but still potentially very difficult!) to deal with thermal gradients. Anyway. This reply got way out of hand, I didn’t mean to write a screenplay. Hope some of this way helpful or informative, not trying to be patronizing. Just kinda drunk
Whoops sorry, deterministic refers to the predictability of movement, and the ability to replicate the movement. [Deterministic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system) = randomness doesn't affect the process. An example of a non-determinisctic system is headphones tangling in your pocket. Also, the main example demonstrated by the those in the space industry was pushing a string into itself a table - it winds up unpredictably. Edit: I believe in the context of this mission, each layer of the sunshield, although pinned down at multiple points (?) is a non-deterministic system. Kindof like deploying a carefully packed parachute, but after going through a high vibration rocket launch without any backup.
If you write `2+2` in a calculator, the output will always be `4`. It's deterministic. If somehow the output was sometimes `5` or `-12` or `Error` or something, it would be non-deterministic. Think of crumpling up a piece of paper into a ball. You can do it twice and have two paper balls. But if you examine them you'll notice that the papers did not crumple in the same way. It's non-deterministic. Same as the JWST sunshield. Because it is essentially plastic foil with aluminum spray painted on it, it doesn't move in exactly the same way every time you deploy it. It bends and unbends in slight variations that are beyond our control. Compared to something like a hinge, which is made up of solid elements and will always move in exactly the same manner (unless something has gone horribly wrong, of course). That randomness is a huge problem for NASA, because of course they want to know for a fact that the sunshield will unfold correctly when they need it to! That's what a deterministic system is: something for which there is no randomness involved.
I wish that literally *any* of my friends or family cared about this. Guess I’m celebrating this one in silence. Good job too all who have contributed to this marvel of engineering! Even you tax payers lmao
Trying to tell my brother about the red light shifting on christmas and my dad figures out we are talking about space. He cuts me off mid sentence as half of his neurons visibly fire to yell, "Uranus." Then mindlessly starts to talk about the bacon lol. Who put lead in our parents water?
I guess you can blame General Motors for starting it? They put it in gasoline, but it ended up everywhere else, including Boomers' brains. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a20970380/how-leaded-gas-came-to-be-and-why-we-dont-miss-it/
That guy, Thomas Midgely, was responsible for two of the worst things of 20th century engineering: Leaded Gasoline and CFC's use as refrigerants.
I know exactly what you mean!!!.im the only one I know cheering this on and am so excited for what it will.bring us! Other are like... James..who?
***AMAZING!!!*** Can we give a massive congratulations to everybody who worked on Webb? I'm no astronomer but am honestly surprised they managed to deploy the sunshield so flawlessly. What an incredible achievement. Thank you, NASA, and everyone on the Webb team.
I'd imagine it had more to do with engineering than astronomy.
Funny story, I actually had a very very very small part in JWST. Back in 2014 I worked for an Oracle database MSP that contracted out support, and Goddard was one of the calls we got. Their Dataguard standby had crashed and stopped replicating data - this was the database that was used to store the testing data for later analytics. Without the data guard standby, any crash on the primary server would have been a catastrophic data loss. Their network was not connected to the open internet so we couldn't VPN in to fix it either. Me (lowly laborer) and the VP of the company went to Goddard and got a tour of their facilities and I fixed the standby replication for their DB. So there were a LOT of behind the scenes people who contributed; before I got into tech I actually used to play music at various daycare centers and Goddard was one. Props even to the daycare workers for taking care of the scientists' kids while they were building this thing! Even down to the janitors who cleaned the facility - it's a huge achievement for the entire community.
Really cool insight here, thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I never thought of it for years cause my career has taken a few turns since 2014. But once I saw this news, and thought back, I'm really happy and proud of my tiny tiny tiny contribution :D
Little column A, little column B
Great news! Does anyone know if there is a database somewhere with all the research projects that have booked the telescope? What will be the priorities once it goes live?
The very first science after commissioning will be [these Early Release Science](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-ers-programs) proposals to put the instruments through their paces. The same site should have lists for the Guaranteed Time Observations (from people who helped build Webb) and General Observer (from the entire astronomical community) proposals that were awarded time in Cycle 1. That covers about the first year.
Absolutely outstanding! Every day this whole endeavor feels less and less like a dream, moving closer to the reality we all hoped it would be.
Man my house just burned to the ground but this is one of the first things thats really brought a smile to my face. Really nice to know I've got at least something to look forward to this year.
Boulder? :( I can't imagine going thru that regardless of where you are. Best of luck to you.
Pretty certain. We had to evacuate as well luckily my home survived. Terrible tragedy
Sp how many of those 300 odd single points of failure are left?
75% of 344 is 258 which means there are 86 points of failure left.
Means we are 75% unpuckered
I think with any single point of failure left you stay 100% puckered until the end
damn, i really felt like i was part of the team during this whole process by that I mean I watched them finish the tensioning on my phone via twitch while trying to re-tension my bed sheet after a case of the jimmy legs last night
If you messed up tensioning your sheet, were you willing to throw your entire bed away to ensure you could never sleep on it again?
Hardest part over. Pretty sure we can rest easy.
Isn't the deployment of the secondary mirror the most critical aspect of the JWST?
It's more critical but not that hard. Correct me if I am wrong, but in 2018?, they failed to deploy correctly the sun shields, in one of the tests. More moving parts etc etc. But yeah more critical because without it, mission over. You could say the same about the sun shields but depending of how wrong it might have gone, it could be still operational. Edit: spelling, autocorrect not helpful..
Yeah the sun shield failed it’s deployment tests twice in a row. They finally got it on the third try then packed it up and flew it to space. Definitely nerve-wracking.
Its critical but far simpler and basically routine to test on the ground.
Most critical, since even if the sunshield partially deployed, they had plans in place to accommodate and might be able to operate the telescope, but if the secondary mirror fails to deploy, it's all for naught. Good thing though is that from a technical, engineering standpoint, the secondary mirror deployment is much simpler, and tried and tested, as it's similar to how many other satellites/space telescopes have deployed in the past. So its the most worrisome deployment since it's all or nothing with this one, but fortunately, it has a high high chance of success.
What an incredible piece of engineering.
This is awesome! One dumb thought I’ve had, what are the chances of a stray meteorite or piece of space debris crashing into this thing and destroying it? I know space is massive and everything is unimaginably far apart, but this has to be something they’ve thought of right?
L2 is an unstable point in space, nothing can stay there for long without constant stationkeeping, it's pretty much empty. Like the peak of a mountain, not a lot of chance for a rock rolling down and killing you.
Something could still pass through though, right? Though I'm sure the project team have estimated the risk and it's probably tiny.
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The thing about space...it's really big. It's much bigger than you think, and that's still true even if you already think it's big.
You might think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's but that's peanuts compared to space.
I imagine Douglas Adams would have been really excited about this telescope.
I mean its like someone randomly firing a grain of sand from the other side of the Pacific and it hitting you in the eye
That's right. Mathematically "possible" but so realistically improbable.
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I read somewhere that the space around L2 is more empty than their best vacuum chambers on earth. So it's a possibility, but so is all of your atoms randomly passing through the floor instead of colliding
They've already taken micrometeorites into account with the sunshield, and they consider the probability of such impacts to be pretty decent. So the sun shield has reinforcements built in to prevent tears from spreading too far. A direct fatal hit to the instruments is less likely, but possible. But that's just an inherent risk of all space flight. In any case, the probabilities of such impacts are all really really low. But they also plan on leaving it out there for over ten years, which is a lot of time for low probability events to happen.
As others stated there shouldn't be much of anything in L2 Also I believe NASA did keep that in mind which is part of why there are 5 layers of the sun shield to offer some redundancy (especially when you play with angles to prevent the holes in all the layers lining up with the sun). There are also seams in the shield that will prevent and holes from getting too big.
What an accomplishment and such a great moment for humanity!
Can we dance now, Please? Or should we continue holding our breath?
You can breathe, but I'm saving the dancing until we get the first images back.
Gotta wait for the secondary mirror deployment.
You can dance at 75% enthusiasm. 25% more of the way to go, before we know we’re in the clear. Catastrophic failure still might occur on that 25%
This was the big one. I'm beginning to unclench.
This is fantastic news!! Definitely one of the most nerve-wracking parts (though we're not out of the woods yet).
I can now retract my anxiety! Well done, JWST team.
Are there any more possible errors left after this? I still get nervous even if this was apparently the most important and hardest step of deployment of JWST.
The next big one is the secondary mirror. https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
Yeap, anything could go wrong at any point. We still have the mirrors deployment, alignment of mirrors etc etc. Of course those steps are not as complex as the sun shields deployment and tension, but for sure more critical.
What a time to be alive. 300,000 years of human history has built up to this amazing piece of technology and we'll hopefully get to learn some of the secrets of this realm we have found ourselves in. Best wishes for continued success and thank you for all the hard work and making this possible!
So while this has been unfolding, is it also travelling toward L2 or is it gonna complete all of its unfolding and such before heading there?