The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos with its launch on December 25, 2021. This highly anticipated event is expected to bring about significant revisions to the standard cosmological model.
Costing over $10 billion and taking nearly two decades to build, the JWST is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever made. Its primary mirror is an impressive 6.5 meters across, dwarfing the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2.4-meter mirror and providing it with six times the light capturing capacity.
Unlike the Hubble, which primarily captures visible and ultraviolet light, the JWST is designed to emphasize capturing infrared light. This capability allows the JWST to see through cosmic dust clouds and peer further back in time than ever before.
While the Hubble has used gravitational lensing to observe galaxies as far back as 13.4 billion years ago, the JWST is poised to surpass it. With its ability to resolve images more clearly, the JWST can see beyond the “toddler galaxies” of the Hubble and glimpse the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.
In fact, the JWST has already captured images of galaxies dating back to just 320 million years after the Big Bang, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge of the cosmos. Scientists are eager to analyze the data collected by this groundbreaking telescope and unlock the secrets of the universe’s earliest days.
With the JWST’s launch, the field of astronomy is on the brink of a new era, one that promises to deepen our understanding of the universe and challenge our existing theories of cosmology. Stay tuned for updates on the JWST’s discoveries as it embarks on its mission to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos.
