Read this article and got really really
really excited what lies in store for the James Webb telescope's launch this December (hopefully).
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“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.”
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“What Webb will do is take that field and go even further,” UT Austin’s Casey explains. “So the tiny specks of light in the background of the Hubble Deep Field will brighten and become more detailed, we’ll be able to see spiral arms, we’ll be able to see structure, and then we’ll get more specks of light even further in the past. We’re seeing farther back in time with Webb.”
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Imagine zooming in on the galaxies shown in the Hubble deep field image... Unreal
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Exoplanet scientists like Stevenson are going to use the Webb to analyze the atmospheres of these worlds: The Webb is capable of determining some of the chemicals in their atmospheres. “We can detect water, CO, CO2, methane,” Stevenson says. While those aren’t definitive signs of life on their own, they could begin to ask fascinating questions: What created that methane and carbon dioxide? Could it have been life?
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https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...science-hubble
How can anyone who has any inkling of astronomy in their veins not be excited about this? These days in a world full of nonsense, this telescope and what it could potentially show us is keeping me excited for the future. This has the potential to be one of, if not the greatest, scientific instruments of our lifetimes.