Interstellar Overdrive:A Journey Aboard The Webb Telescope.

Space is so vast, so enormous, so hard to 'grok' that when I attended, lemonade in hand, Skeptics in the Pub - Online's JWST:From launch to first science with Dr Emma Curtis-Lake (a STFC Webb Fellow now based at the University of Hertfordshire) I felt certain I was in for something of a science lesson. I also felt fairly certain there would be large parts of the talk I wouldn't understand.

I was correct on both counts. I had no idea what the doc was talking about when she touched on blue shifts, red shifts, spectroscopy, and the spectrum of exoplanet atmospheres and was even more baffled when it came to WASP-96b and HIP65426B.

But, fortunately for me, much of the evening was presented in layman's terms so that even a non-scientist, and a man that will never be astronaut, like me was able to understand. Or at least get a basic grip on. The JWST (the James Webb Space Telescope has been changed to the Webb telescope after it came to light that James E. Webb, a former NASA administrator, had been involved in trying to purge homosexuals from government work forces in something that became known as the 'lavender scare') launched on Christmas Day last year and is the largest telescope ever sent into space.

At a cost of ten billion US dollars. That, of course, is quite a lot of money at a time when belts are being tightened but Dr Curtis-Lake, though she never opined on the cost, presumably thinks it was worth it. She certainly seemed brimful of enthusiasm for the project and very eager to talk about just what knowledge it may bring to us.

The sun shield on the telescope is about the size of a tennis court and there's also a huge mirror which is bigger than the rocket that sends the whole thing into space. These parts are folded up on launch and unfolded once they reach space. Which it now, most certainly, has done. It is now roughly a million miles away and is being held at an extremely low temperature. I can't remember quite how low but it was below -220 degrees Celsius.

It needs to be that cold to capture the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that it needs to which, unlike the much smaller Hubble, are the infrared parts. It has to be extremely cold because heat equals light and any heat would confuse the images the telescope is sending back to Earth. Powerful Earth based telescopes are unable to achieve the same quality of image because views become blocked, or obscured, by Earth's dusty atmosphere.

So why the infrared? Multiple reasons. It allows the telescope to peer through dust and see the stars previously hidden behind it. Some of which are newly formed stars. By looking at new stars, we can get an idea of how they were formed and, from that, an idea of how our star, the sun, was formed.

The Webb telescope also allows us a good look at stars at the other end of that spectrum. Dying, or dead, stars. It's the best tool we've ever had for investigating planets outside of our solar system, exoplanets. Some of which are far far older than our own 4,500,000 year old home. In the end it helps us ask, and maybe even answer, the perennial question - is anybody out there?

The Webb telescope isn't just probing the geography of the universe, it's probing the history of the universe. We know that when we see the moon we see it as it was roughly 1.225 seconds ago and that when we see the sun we see it as it was roughly seven minutes ago. But the moon and the sun, in cosmic terms, are near door neighbours. Some stars are almost unimaginably further away.

The images we see of some distant stars may actually date from before the time of the dinosaurs. Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer, proved how the further away one things is from another in space the faster they are moving away from each other (as the universe rapidly expands) and this creates a Doppler effect in light (and in sound).

These factors have to be taken account when the Webb telescope is looking much further back in time than the Hubble did. The Webb telescope can 'see' as far back as the time of the formation of the Milky Way, our galaxy, roughly 13.6 billion years ago. Our space hardware is getting close to seeing right back to the Big Bang - though it's uncertain we'll ever manage to get all the way there. The way we're destroying the planet it's certainly a race against time.

It seems obvious to me that if we can understand how planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, and ultimately, the entire universe was formed this will bring new and incredible levels of knowledge to human. What's not certain to me, judging by what humans have done with information and technology so far, is that any of this will be put to good use.

As rich cunts like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson fly off into space to escape the damage they, and others, have done on Earth it seems to me unlikely. But that doesn't mean the Webb telescope is a wasted exercise and it doesn't mean that Dr Curtis-Lake's faith in, and passion for, it is wrong either.

Like I said, I didn't understand everything from last night's talk but it was still fascinating (not least the images of 'the pillars of creation', 'Stephan's quintet', and the 'cartwheel galaxy' which I've used in this blog) and for that I thank compere James Bremner, Dr Emma Curtis-Lake, and, once again, Skeptics in the Pub - Online. To infinity and beyond.