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Hope for the future and new discoveries
I really love the way the Advent Livestream on Thursday ended. First off with the live performance of “Songbird” which was absolutely sublime and magical, and that would be an understatement, but also with what MLT said about hope as we face another uncertain year. Lisa said: “Let’s stick together, be good to one another, listen to good music, make good music, and be glad we have each other.” Amen to that. MLT give me hope the future can be friendly and beautiful.
In the spirit of hope, one of the big events in the news this Christmas time is the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope that will be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble space telescope that orbits the earth and gave and redefined space for us from distant galaxies, Super Novas, black holes at the centre of galaxies, to glimpses into the beginning of time. This new James Webb Space Telescope which will go out past the moon will let us see to the beginning of time, and explore new worlds we can only imagine right now.
Watching the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas day made me forget the doom and gloom of the current world situation, and my spirit soared in hope and joy, just like with Songbird, and seeing the red balloon take flight. I don’t want to minimize the gravity of the current world issues going on, but we don’t have to let it define these times.
Here goes Janitor Joe.
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81 Replies
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I watched the launch too, Jung. It had kind of become a running joke how many times it had been delayed (launch was originally scheduled for 2007), so it’s hard to believe it finally happened! Here’s hoping they don’t discover a critical design flaw post-launch as they did for Hubble, because there’s no way to service it.
That video is probably the best five-minute summary of JWST’s capabilities that I’ve come across!
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Hi David. I didn’t know they’ve been planning this since 2007. I bet for the next month or two when the JWST reaches it’s orbiting destination and unfolds it’s mirrors and takes it’s first photo, many scientists will be in unimaginable anticipation, hoping nothing breaks down. For me it’s so fascinating how by looking through a binocular, in essence you can look back in time, and the JWST can peak into the beginning of time, the big bang when this reality started. When the JWST looks into the vast distance, and back into time like a time machine, I wonder if it will reveal something we never anticipated, that will blow our socks off! In the words of Captain James T Kirk, to boldly go where no one has gone before. The answer is out there!
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Yes, Jung, and the design process began back in 1996. It’s not unusual for space telescopes and interplanetary spacecraft to span decades between design and fruition. And each year scientists and engineers have to keep their fingers crossed that legislators won’t vote to defund the whole thing.
Because of the expansion of the universe, the most distant (and oldest) objects have had their emitted visible light shifted to infrared wavelengths as viewed from Earth. JWST’s main capability over Hubble is that it is built to detect infrared radiation rather than visible light, and therefore able to examine the formation process of the earliest stars and galaxies.
This is actually one of the stickiest current problems in cosmology: Hubble showed us that galaxies formed surprisingly early in the history of the universe, and we don’t yet understand how the matter density evolved so quickly from almost perfectly uniform to very clumpy.
As you suggested, JWST will almost certainly show us a lot of cool things that we never even imagined. Just compare the photos in astronomy textbooks pre- and post-Hubble, and you’ll get a sense of how much of a revolution in understanding we’re in for!
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Hi David,
what are your greatest expectations for JWST, or which questions seem most interesting to you:
- Clues to how the first stars in the Hydrogen Nebula might have formed?
- The answer to the question if there is water or even life on exoplanets?
- Findings on whether dwarf planets might exist at the edge of our solar system?
- The deciphering of the secrets of Jupiter?
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Hey, Juergen!
Anything JWST discovers will be a step toward understanding our universe better, and it will undoubtedly introduce us to new phenomena that require explanation, but in terms of the “known unknowns” I think the most intriguing and mystifying question is how the first generations of stars and galaxies formed. We’re trying to build a universe here, and a few pages of blueprints are missing.
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Hi Jung, hi David,
a fascinating topic and I am also very excited about the insights that JWST will provide us. Since I can’t make a qualified scientific contribution now, I’ll try to support the topic at least musically.
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Now you have made me curious and I have found a nice video that even a model builder (and former Lego fan) like me understands.
(I think from minute 11:03, the video is then aimed at a slightly different target audience. Unfortunately, I have not yet figured out how to cut youtube videos at the end).
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Hi Jurgen. I was a big Lego fan too. The little Lego guy does a good job MCing the videos. Great video, really gives a nice explanation of the James Webb Telescope and it’s capabilities. Wow those gold reflective layers of the mirror is 100 times thinner than a strand of human hair! These Lego learning series videos are cool. Thanks
That Space music video I think is a good demo of the universality of music. You can see in the reflection of their space helmets what they were trying to express in the music.
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Here’s a little Kinks Ukelele gem in keeping with the spirit of space flight.
Mona and Lisa could have a lot of fun with this one.
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Hi Jung, thanks for setting the mood with the music of The Kinks. I’m sure Mona and Lisa would have a lot of fun with it.
Before JWST will give us fantastic insights into our universe and also perhaps into our most distant past, here is a nice review of what Hubble has already given us in terms of images and information. So to say, what happened so far:
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Hi Jurgen, thanks for this. This sets up the perfect point of reference for the James Webb telescope appreciation. These images of distant worlds and galaxies from the Hubble just amazes me to no end.
I just can’t help but hear MLTs awesome mysterious Starman and Janitor Joe playing in my head when I start thinking space exploration.
Play it again Sam!
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Here’s hoping the telescope sens back interesting results.
Cheers
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While the James Webb Space Telescope is on the way to the stars and will hopefully soon provide us with exciting information, we can sweeten the time of waiting a bit with beautiful music down here on earth. With songs that reflect the desire to be close to the stars or simply describe the love and hopes of people whose fulfillment they seek in the vastness of the universe.
I would like to start with a classic by composer Bart Howard, who first published this beautiful song in 1954 under the title “In other words” (It became better known under the title “Fly me to the moon”).
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Hi Jurgen, a nice Jason Mraz song! I discovered Jason Mraz through MLTs raw and wonderful acoustic cover of I’m Yours. Always loved MLTs version of this song. I like some of Jason Mraz songs.
“Well, open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and, damn, you’re free
And look into your heart, and you’ll find that the sky is yours
So please don’t, please don’t, please don’t
There’s no need to complicate
‘Cause our time is short
This, oh this, this is our fate, I’m yours”
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I think I posted this one a while back on another thread, but it’s appropriate here as well. A lighthearted but aspirational song by the recently departed Michael Nesmith:
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Hi David, great video, and I can relate to this song. Instead of an Eldorado, my ride is a Mustang to the Moon. I remember early in my career in my 20s working so, so hard, when my vacation finally came up the first thing I did was a big road trip, and how sweet that felt. The harder you work, the sweeter the vacations I remember. My Mustang was my “Supersonic Rocket Ship”, and I was “Janitor Joe” as I blazed through the hot summer night in the desert somewhere between Sacramento and LA gazing up at the stars! I felt like I was traveling into space. There was so much passion, and I felt so free!
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Of course, if imagination is involved, Sesame Street has it covered:
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Cool David. I like it very much. Ernie was my favourite character in Sesame Street. That was also because of the German dubbing voice.
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I’ve watched a number of those Sesamstrasse videos on YouTube, Juergen, as a way of testing my ability to understand in German some dialogues that I know very well in English. One of my favorites involves Ernie and Bert fishing in a boat. Bert is having no luck, and Ernie casually demonstrates how he can cause fish to jump into the boat just by calling out to them. In English he says “Heeeeere, fishy fishy fishy fishy!” But in German it’s rendered as “Hieeeeerher, Fischlein Fischlein Fischlein Fischlein!” I never suspected the existence of the word Fischlein.
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Well observed David. There is a german peculiarity that consists of putting words into a cute form. For example: Tisch = Tischlein. What is actually meant is that this is a very small Tisch. A „Fischlein“ is a small or young fish. More examples: Haus = Häuslein, Kind = Kindlein (plural Kinderlein) and so on.
Especially in the corner of Germany where I was born (Ruhr Area), everything is put into a cute form. This is done by ending words with „chen“. E.g. Haus = Häuschen, Hase = Häschen, Baum = Bäumchen, Socke = Söckchen, Tisch = Tischchen, Glas = Gläschen, Blume = Blümchen. It works with a surprising number of nouns and I do it all the time (but only in my private sphere). Terrible. And yet: I like it.
And every dialect in German does this in its own way. If you hear someone saying that he lives in a „Häusle“ (Haus) and that his „Häusle“ has a „Dächle“ (Dach), or that he lives in a „Häusle mit einem Dächle an einem Bächle (Bach)“ you can be sure you’re dealing with a Swabian (a part of the federal state of Baden Württemberg, that is where the cars with the star are built).
Fun Fact: When a Swabian says “Adele” to you, he doesn’t mean the singer, but “Auf wiedersehen”. And when he says „Ha Noi“, then he does not mean the capital of Vietnam but it means something like “Oh, no!“ -
Yes, Juergen, we did learn in school about diminutive suffixes like -lein (Frau –> Fraeulein) and -chen (Magd –> Maedchen). I just didn’t expect the language to have a way to get cute with a word like Fisch.
You just reminded me of the song Ihr Kinderlein Kommet that we learned in high school!
I never heard of -le though. I do recall a textbook reading in which a boy named Franz was referred to as “der Franzl”. Is that an example?
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I didn’t mean to confuse you David. The suffix (die Nachsilbe) -le is not used in High German. As far as I know, it is a regional peculiarity (Swabian dialect: „Fischle“). The name Franzl is also not a derivation of the name Franz, but an independent name. Just like Franz, Franzl is a very old-fashioned name and is used in Bavaria and Austria (ask Mona & Lisa – maybe they have a Franzl in their circle of acquaintances). Interestingly, such old names are once again very popular with young parents. They call their children Paula and Emma or Hans and Paul again. That always irritates me a lot, because my grandparents were called Paul and Emma ( Paul, by the way, can be nicely changed into Paulchen. Paulchen McCartney) 🙂
It’s just like in the fashion industry: old trends are coming back.
By the way, I find it very interesting how the German and English first names are related, or what common origin they have. Even the surnames often tell their own story. I sometimes wonder if many US contemporaries actually know how their surnames were originally spelled or pronounced ?
I’m always sorry that I can’t be very helpful to you with grammatical questions, but I’ve always hated grammar lessons and successfully suppressed most of it. The luxury of having a good command of a language is that you no longer need language analysis. Something I can’t say about my English, unfortunately.
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Hey, “Cookie Monster”, my favorite Sesame Street Character.
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