Adapted from a James Bond movie, “Science” calls it the “Golden Eye” highlighting its contribution to science. But unlike the 1995 movie, military use of the JWST is completely excluded. The telescope is a collaboration between European, US and Canadian space agencies.
After 20 years of development and countless setbacks, the almost nine billion-euro JWST hit its target at the end of January at “Lagrange Point 2”, 1.5 million kilometers further from the earth than the sun.
There are five such points in the solar system where the gravitational forces of the sun and earth balance each other. There the device opened its “golden infrared eye”. Since the middle of the year, it has also opened up insights into the universe and its formation in “breathtaking, unprecedented detail”, according to “Science.” Immediately after the full operation, “researchers were able to boast of the discovery of thousands of new galaxies that were farther and older than any previously documented.”
JWST is a major advancement in the Hubble telescope that has shaped the image of space for many years. The new technology can be used to capture signals in different infrared wave ranges, providing new information about newly formed stars or planets outside our solar system (exoplanets).
According to the famous expert magazine, scientists “have begun to reveal in detail the atmospheric composition of planets hundreds of light years from Earth,” which allows inferences to be made about worlds that may have the conditions necessary for life to flourish.
Researchers also want to get a glimpse into space shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. The heart of the device is the 6.5 meter diameter mirror. Measurements are made with a variety of instruments such as cameras and spectrographs.
The two in one is the “Mid-Infrared Instrument” (MIRI), the development of which since 2003 the astrophysicist Manuel Güdel from the University of Vienna has played a leading role. This is also a kind of virtual laboratory in space, where thermal radiation from gas and microscopically small dust can be detected. The data can be used to draw conclusions about molecules in space and to study the composition of fine dust in the universe.
Austrian experts were also involved in the heart of the space observatory: Viennese space company Beyond Gravity (formerly Ruag Space) provided two high-precision mechanisms for one of the telescope’s three main instruments, the Near Infrared Spectrograph, the “super-eye”. . It can simultaneously record up to 100 celestial bodies such as galaxies or stars.
It can look deeper into space and provide images of celestial objects much further away than “Hubble”. The Vienna company provided devices that allow precise mounting and rotation of a filter wheel and the “eye” grill wheel.
Other discoveries of the year include the discovery of a giant microbe by US microbiologists. It is visible to the naked eye and grows up to five centimeters in length. Also on the list is the development of a rice variety that promises yields for several years.
A study in Nature deciphering how the plague pathogen (Yersinia pestis) altered the genome of Europeans also landed it in Inventions. Other highlights include the reconstruction of a two-million-year-old ecosystem based on DNA traces in Greenland, the success in developing a vaccine against respiratory syncytial viruses (RVS), and the identification of a pathogen that can trigger multiple sclerosis.
Also on the list are NASA’s DART mission, which makes it possible to knock an asteroid out of orbit, the development of an artistic and creative “gifted” artificial intelligence, and the adoption of a “pioneering” climate law. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2022
(SDA)