Can the James Webb Space Telescope Solve the Mysteries of the Universe?

Liv Xu

New, high-resolution images from the James Webb Space Telescope opened a new era of discovery leading to exotic yet exciting findings.

The history of astronomy dates to the ancient times. Ever since the curious minds of our past looked up the night sky and wondered, the story of our observations begun. From Ptolemy’s geocentric model to modern-day Standard Model of Cosmology, mankind has derived the knowledge of the universe primarily based on observations, upon which they proposed their hypothesises and formulated their laws. However, as time proceeds, the accuracy of data collected continues to improve significantly due to the enhancement of equipment, regarding the ever-advancing technology.

Why is the James Webb Space Telescope significant?

In the past few decades, scientists have launched a considerable number of space telescopes to fulfil our observational needs, such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) (launched 18 Nov 1989) and the Hubble Space Telescope (launched 24 Apr 1990). They reflect the history of our technological development, and their accomplishments enabled us to confirm existing theories.

Image of James Webb Telescope. Credit: NASA

Amongst all, the James Webb Space Telescope (launched 25 Dec 2021) (later abbreviated to JWST) is currently the largest, most powerful space telescope and utilises the most cutting-edge infrared technologies. According to NASA, it aims to ‘complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity’, enabling us to understand every phase in the history of our universe. This will be revolutionary since it can potentially pin down on the ultimate evolution of the universe, which currently involves uncertain hypothesises, as well as providing modern cosmology with a more complete profile.

JWST, as a scientific successor to Hubble, can ‘go beyond’ the capabilities of its predecessor. We can identify that the image by JWST displays a significant increase in overall resolution, transforming the originally misty background into a simply stunning backdrop of stars. This is a huge breakthrough in observation. It allows scientists to conduct a more thorough analysis of its features, as well as increasing the number of celestial candidates for further research. Considering the important contributions Hubble has made, such as the discovery of dark energy, the fuel of the universe’s accelerating growth, we can expect the JWST to develop upon its accomplishments.

The Pillars of Creation as imaged by the Hubble, left, and in near infrared by the James Webb space telescope

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, VIA, AP

On the technical side, the JWST also holds great promises. Gregory L. Robinson, Webb program director at NASA Headquarters, described the successful completion of its deployments to be ‘historic’. It is remarkable that under such great complexity of sequence, the JWST successfully arrived at its destination, the second Lagrange point (a position allowing it to stay in line with the Earth as it orbits the Sun). Due to the almost perfect conditions on its launch, scientists believe that it will surpass its expected lifespan of 10 years and push towards 20 years, which immensely extends our time for research and discovery and enlarges the possibility of solving current mysteries.

From the images, what have we discovered?

Recently, various news and headlines are constantly reporting the findings of the JWST, and a lot of attention has been caught from both the public and the academic world. Below is a list of notable discoveries selected from the web:

“Pillars of Creation” (see image above)
Massive galaxy cluster bending light – This reveals an intriguing possibility: a galactic merger (when two or more galaxies collide) might be in progress in the early universe
Dark matter around a knot of galaxies – The first potential detection of dark matter achieves observational confirmation for our hypothesis, which, according to the Pantheon+ analysis, states that it takes up almost 1/3 of the composition of the universe.

The image captures three tightly packed galaxies orbiting a quasar. The galaxies are moving at great speeds, leading experts to believe a dense mass of dark matter is present © Provided by Daily Mail

The James Webb Space Telescope has been making significant progress since it began its life of scientific work. It has both enhanced previous observational results and confirmed our theoretical predictions, as well as revealing new discoveries. We are expecting more data to be received and analysed, especially about entities with a mysterious essence such as dark energy, dark matter, early galactic formation and so on, which we assume will accelerate development within the theoretical realm. Overall, scientists remain optimistic considering its shockingly high efficiency and we, the public, should share this optimism and be excited.

The massive gravity of galaxy cluster MACS0647 is gravitationally lensing several other systems in this image. (Image credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScl, and Tiger Hsiao (Johns Hopkins University) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScl))

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