Spotting galaxies as big as the Milky Way to watching stars forming, the James Webb Space Telescope has been operating for more than two years showing us the mysteries from the universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most powerful infrared telescope ever built and was successfully launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on December 25th, 2021. This collaborative mission between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) reached the Lagrange Point L2 in January 2022 and has been collecting data to study the formation of the first starts and galaxies, the evolution of galaxies over time, and simultaneously searching for exoplanets, formation of stars, and planetary systems.
The amount of data received from the JWST has impressed the scientists and engineers working on analyzing it, but, as it has been said, it is not what they expected. The simulations performed before the launch of the mission have shown different results from the actual observations. Don’t get me wrong, it is not a bad thing, the data received could trigger a series of new discoveries on how the universe worked in its early days.
A simple example of how simulations disagree with the observations from the JWST is the amount of activity in the early days of the universe, with larger and brighter galaxies than expected. This will certainly help scientists to improve models and understand the role of other factors not considered so far (or underestimated) in the formation of the universe, like the role of dark matter.
Also, the JWST has revealed the presence of bio-signatures, elements that could indicate the presence of life. Molecules of methane and carbon dioxide have been found in K2-18b, a massive exoplanet, 8.6 times the size of Earth. The presence of these elements may indicate the potential presence of a hydrogen rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface. This unveils the possibility of having found a habitable exoplanet (more about this exoplanet in a future article, stay tuned!), that was only possible thanks to the technology of the powerful telescope.
In this ever-expanding universe, the JWST is bringing us breakthroughs of the universe and helping us understand how things worked in the early days, during the formation of the universe, and with what’s going on now, in the present. Time can only tell how helpful this mission will be to science.
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