Cosmic Instability: How a Smooth Early Universe Grew into Everyone You Know - Livestream

Gravity made stars, stars made heavy elements, gravity and chemistry made planets, geology and biology made people, and people made telescopes.  What we would like to know is hard it all was, and could it happen elsewhere.  The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for launch in October 2021, will extend the discoveries of the Hubble with a much bigger mirror, cooled to low temperatures so it can observe infrared radiation. It will have detectors capable of observing a bumblebee at the distance of the Moon! Dr. Mather will show the telescope, describe its capabilities, and discuss what it might find.  We expect to see the history of the universe laid out before us, from the first luminous objects to our local neighborhood, and to answer questions like: How did the galaxies and black holes first form and grow?  Are there Earth-like planets out there?  How can we tell if they harbor life?

Speaker: Dr. John C. Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist and the Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Online at YouTube