I'm Flora Lixman, and you're listening to Science Friday. Today in the show, checking in on the Webb Space Telescope, which has been out there low-key, answering little questions like, What's the universe made of? And posing new ones. Like, was Einstein wrong? Before launching a web, every other scientist you would ask, they would be excited about the surprises. And it's given us many.
And here to field your questions is Macarena Garcia-Marine. She is an astrophysicist and instrument scientist at the European Space Agency. She's also... Also Deputy Project Scientist at the Webb Space Telescope based at the Space Telescope Science Institute, famously in Maryland. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let's talk about this because there's so many really interesting things.
going on. So much exciting news. Let's start with the news this week of this super old galaxy, right? I mean, this is, to me, it was mind-blowing. Was it mind-blowing to you? It was mind-blowing to me, yes. Tell me why that is. Because we're talking about... galaxies that existed about 280 million years after the Big Bang. That's nothing.
It's like a baby galaxy. It's like a baby galaxy. So they discovered this galaxy going way back in time. Way back in time. And let's remember, the universe is about 13.8 billion years with a B. So this is a baby galaxy. And for a baby galaxy, it has had the time. to actually have stars and reaching the galaxy and producing some additional chemical elements on top of hydrogen and helium. So it's really, really a fast way of growing galaxies. How old should it be?
to make those things instead of what it is now? What would you expect the age to be? I mean, it depends on when they start being. So stars, they can last depending on their mass. They can last between millions and billions of years. But we don't really know how these very first stars were. They may have been thousands of times bigger than the sun. So why is your head exploding?
Because this is really why we launched the James Webb Space Telescope. The primary science case was to observe these very first galaxies and very first stars. And actually, this is... The oldest we have confirmed with a spectra, which is like the fingerprint or the DNA of the galaxy. So you decompose the light and can really make sure.
how old that galaxy is. But there are candidates that are based on imaging that are even older. They're older ones. Yeah. They are only candidates. They are not confirmed because they are only based on imaging. But those galaxies, it's very interesting because they have been observed with Webb, but using gravitational lensing. So that is nature helping us by enlarging... galaxies that are really far away. So these galaxies are fainter and the researchers, they think that probably they are the
progenitors of these other galaxies we are seeing that are brighter and slightly closer. So it is man-blowing. So what is it here? Do we have to rewrite the laws of physics or do we have to rewrite how we think galaxies form? I think we have to rewrite how we think about Alex's form at that time of the universe. So things like the Big Bang, the cosmological theories we have, they still hold.
But we need to make adjustments to really understand how the galaxies form. It's like the chicken and the next thing. Is it first the stars? Is it the black hole? How does this all come together? Did these findings make us rethink anything about our own galaxy? I think what is making us rethink is if you go closer to us, still in a very young universe, we already see galaxies with spiral arms and even with bars.
To me, that's also a surprise that in such an old universe, we already have those structures that take millions of years and billions of years to take place. So in that sense, yes, it is really making us rethink.
How long do you need to make those structures? Do you have any idea on that? Can you give us a little bit of a hint? We know, for instance, that bars, at least there is one galaxy that we have seen with Webb that has a bar when the universe was about... two billion years old very early still yeah but these are much earlier right these galaxies oh yeah yeah the first one we're talking about they are really babies they are bold and bright yeah
Let's go to the phones. Let's go to V in Ventura, California. Hi, V. Hi. I'm on Science Friday. You're on Science Friday. Go ahead. Awesome. Yes, I had a question. As of recently, the James Webb Telescope... found that there was kind of a void around our Milky Way galaxy. I was wondering if you had any sort of insight into this, if maybe it's a possible black hole that we're going towards, or if it's maybe some sort of dark matter we don't know about.
A void around our Milky Way galaxy. Have you heard anything about this? Honestly, not. But you've mentioned black holes and you've mentioned dark matter. In both areas, Webb is also contributing. At the center of our own galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole, millions and millions of mass in there, and with stars circling around and materials circling around.
We're looking into that with Webb, not only the surrounding of the black hole, but all the structures around it and how that impacts the environment. And when it comes to dark matter, we are also seeing things like gravitational lensing. How does the math... So, gravitational lensing is...
a situation where you have, for instance, a cluster of galaxies that are really, really massive. They are so big and so massive that they bend the light around. So when you do the calculations, you find out that there is actually mass missing. So that means there is something like
dark matter that you want to see, but you know it's there because it affects the light. So in that sense, yes. Do you think that dark matter has anything to do with the formation of these mystery galaxies that you've just discovered? I don't know. That's a good question. This is one of Ira's favorite topics. I love that, yeah. Well, the truth is that...
There are many things we still don't understand, which is exciting. I'm glad to hear you say that. Yeah. Yeah, because a lot of people think science knows everything. No, we don't. No. But that's a good thing. Because that means that we still have many, many questions that need to be answered. So we need more data and more generations of scientists really looking into this. And I've had, when we've talked about this before, I've had scientists say, you know...
I like the chase more than the discovery. Exactly. The chase is great. And actually, before launching web, every other scientist you would ask, they would be excited about the surprises. And it's giving us many. What are you chasing? Me personally? I've been chasing...
Following up with what she was asking, the center of our own galaxy, actually. We got data very recently on some structures around the black hole, so I'm very excited looking into that. Are they interesting? What are you finding about that? Well, I'm still looking at the data, so we'll see about that. All right, let's go to the phone. San Antonio Talley in San Antone. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. Go ahead.
My question is, I'm not sure if this was an active decision that was made, but how was it decided what direction the telescope was sent in in space? How was how was that trajectory decided? Oh, yeah. And what direction to find these? You mean.
In which direction to find the galaxy? Oh, it's a really good question. So first you go to the galaxies, you already know they are there. And for that we have what we call deep fields. For instance, the Hubble Space Telescope looked into these deep fields and... we knew there were galaxies that were perhaps about 400 million years old after the Big Bang. So you look into the fields, you already have data, and you just observe.
during maybe 10 hours and then you compare those images and do some tests to really understand if there are galaxies and once you have candidates then you go back and take a spectra. That is, you make a rainbow of that candidate. But yeah, the fields were fields that were already observed by telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope. It feels like we cannot talk about Webb without talking about exoplanets.
I agree. What is new and exciting there to you? New are everything. Web has opened up the field of exoplanets, which is great because exoplanets didn't even exist when Web was conceived. Maybe we didn't see them. Yeah, we hadn't seen them. They might have been there. Sorry, they were there. You're right. But as a science topic, we didn't know they were there. And now there are...
Almost 6,000 of them. So yes, it's a field that is really blossoming. Lots of discoveries, lots of new molecules, observations of... day side and night side. So it's really, really exciting and it's opening up a new field. Well, there was this recent news that I think was linked to Webb about a biosignature. Correct. On an exoplanet. Yes. Burst our bubble or tell us what the real deal is.
The real deal is that that's a very bold claim, right? Extraordinary claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So, of course, when that news came out, there was a lot of excitement, but then... Other scientists from the community actually look at the data and they are concluding different things. So to confirm that claim, you would have to confirm the type of planet that it is.
And still it's not clear if it's something like a mini Neptune or a Haitian world that is a world that is water with a hydrogen atmosphere. So we don't know the type of planet. Still not clear if the detection is solid. And still not clear if the molecules that are claimed are actually the ones they are because they could be something else. And the third thing is that even if all the other conditions...
are demonstrated. DMS, which is this molecule, you can also find it in comets and you can also find it in the interstellar medium. So many open questions. When you get up in the morning. What gets you excited about what you do? Everything, to be honest. I have to say, every day there is some new scientific discovery. Every day there may be a new paper. Every day there is something that the community is excited about.
Part of the work is also to bring that message to the public. It's not just about the science community. That's what you're here for. Exactly. Coming up after the break, we'll talk about what to expect from a possible successor to the web. Stay with us. You've probably heard me say many times that we are all in this together. We're so encouraged by those who have backed me up on this by stepping up to support Science Friday in the face of the current funding challenges.
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And let's go to the phones. Aaron in New Orleans. Hi, Aaron. Yes, hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. I did have a question. You know, I actually changed it to a much better one, if that's okay. We'll be the judge of that. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. What I wanted to ask a guest was, what is her opinion on the Amuamua object? Do you think that this was something from...
intelligent life? Or do you think this was just some blip from another solar system that just happened into ours? Glad you changed your question. That was a good one. Yes. Yeah, that's a really good question.
Personally, I think it was an object or visitor from outside of our solar system. As we were saying before, the claim of life or intelligence or anything like that, it requires really... lots of proof and we don't have that but yeah it's yeah his original question which i had was whether the budget cuts are affecting your research and the research of astronomy and nasa
All the stuff that you do. So at this point, we don't know. And that's a question better addressed to NASA in terms of what's going to happen. But you don't feel it yourself at this point? At this point, no. What I feel and what I can really say is that... The observatory is performing incredibly. The community is exciting and the science coming out of it. It's really something worth pursuing every single day. You know, I think for the public...
And for someone like me, a lot of what I see from Webb are these beautiful images. And they bring me so much joy and so much pleasure. But I wondered for you, for astrophysicists, like... Do you learn something by looking at the images, or is it really just the data that underpins it that you're interested in? We learn a lot from images. And actually, often you first use the image to identify.
candidates of special galaxies or candidates of something and then you take a spectra because with imaging you have much bigger field of view. You cover lots of space but also the different colors you use to create these beautiful images. it's a thing of in the visible would be red and blue and green and all that so you have infrared colors these colors give you a lot of information and all of these beautiful images you see they are also used to the science with them
So is it like a Where's Waldo where you're like, oh, look, there's something in the corner that looks interesting. Let's follow up. It is. Are people better at looking at the images than, let's say, AI? I mean, if you've got a bunch of people together.
I think there is a bit of both. I think the future of astronomy, I mean, the future of many missions is to have large... vast amounts of data right so there's going to be some sort of machine learning techniques that can be applied for that but behind that i think personally you always need a person
with a brain that can do the interpretation and actually figuring out exactly what's going on. And the web was specifically made to make these kinds of discoveries, right? What tools does it have to do that? It has four size instruments. They all operate on the infrared. So that's a type of light we don't see. But it's really, really good to see cold objects and to peer through the dust and to see very distant objects.
We have about 75% of the time with your spectroscopy. Right. So all of the four instruments have spectroscopic modes. We have a vast array of spectroscopy, and that means essentially we break up the light into a rainbow. And with that, you can really understand what's going on. And they also do imaging. We do coronography, which is a technique where you can block the light from a star, for instance, and see the planets around.
Yeah, you need to do that. You do that as well, exactly. So we do have a lot of scientific power behind all of the instruments. What's happening? I know already we're talking about a successor to the web. right? The Roman space telescope, how would that be different from the Webb telescope? What would it do differently?
Roman will be different because it will look into a different wavelength, and also it's a different concept. Roman will do lots of surveys, really large field of view, covering large portions of the sky. And what do you learn by doing that? Well, there's going to be a lot of learning on transience. That is, transience is that you go to a region of the sky and observe it, and then you go back again and look for things that have changed.
And that could be supernova, that could be galactic nuclei, black holes active, etc. I see you're not excited at all about this kind of work. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Macarena Garcia-Marin is an astrophysicist and instrumental scientist for the European Space Agency, also deputy project scientist for the Webb Space Telescope.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review us if you like the show. And you can always leave us a comment on this segment on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you. Today's episode was produced by Annette Heist. But a lot of folks help make this show happen every single week, including John Dankosky, Danielle Johnson, Beth Ramey, Jackie Hirschfeld. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.