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The James Webb Space Telescope's Next Targets Are Potentially Mind-Blowing – CNET

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With the release of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images on July 12 (and a sneaky reveal by US President Joe Biden on July 11), NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency proved the $10 billion, 1-million-miles-from-Earth, two decade-long dream ‘scope actually works. And it works flawlessly. Just take a look at the upgraded visuals Webb delivered over its predecessor, Hubble. They’re visceral masterpieces that force us to think of the universe’s magnificence and reflect on our solar system’s negligible corner within. 

But what we saw in early July was only the preface of JWST’s book. It’ll be the chapters that follow which will write out its legacy. 

Even though the telescope’s first full-color results were excellent, they’re merely a taste of the instrument’s capabilities. In truth, we may not even have words to describe what’s to come, in the way the Hubble Space Telescope’s first light image couldn’t foreshadow the astounding deep fields that would one day plaster astronomy department walls or the nebulae that would inspire poetry.

Five galaxies locked in a dance make up Stephan’s Quintet. Images by the JWST released on July 12, 2022.

NASA

But we might be able to infer some scenes of JWST’s future because, despite this telescope’s public recency, scientists have been lining up for years to use it. 

Already, researchers are set to point it at phenomena that’ll blow your mind: massive black holes, shattering galaxy mergers, luminescent binary stars emanating smoke signals, and even marvels closer to home like Ganymede, an icy moon of Jupiter.

More specifically, a lucky first few scientists hold proposals divided into six categories, each meticulously selected by the James Webb Space Telescope Advisory Committee and the Space Telescope Science Institute in November 2017 — not to mention the more than 200 international projects separately awarded time on the telescope and those ready to join the waitlist.

But the initial cadre of JWST space explorers is meant to be a win-win for both scientist and ‘scope. These studies will create datasets, baselines, handy life hacks and just generally prime the powerful machine’s instruments for everything that comes next. For the big moments that’ll go down in history.

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An artist’s conception of the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

“To realize the James Webb Space Telescope’s full science potential, it is imperative that the science community quickly learns to use its instruments and capabilities,” says a page about the Director’s Discretionary-Early Release Science Programs, which was put together to pick out which investigators will test out JWST for its first 5 months of science operations (following the 6-month telescope commissioning period).

Perusing the list has heightened my anticipation — and I bet it’ll elevate yours, too. 

Here’s a snippet.

Turning the page for JWST

Some 3.5 billion light-years from Earth lies an enormous cluster of galaxies called Abell 2744, also known as Pandora’s Cluster. 

One might say this is the perfect starting candidate for JWST, as it’s part of the ancient, faraway universe. NASA’s next-gen telescope contains a wealth of infrared imaging equipment that can access light emanating from the distant cosmos — light neither human eyes nor standard optical telescopes can see. It’s a science exploration match made in heaven. 

Thus, a crew of investigators plans to observe what’s going on in this brilliant galaxy cluster, hidden to human vision but vital to astrophysical advancement. 

abell

Abell 2744, imaged by combining X-rays from Chandra (diffuse blue emission) with optical light data from Hubble (red, green and blue).

NASA/CXC; Optical: NASA/STScI

They plan on using two of JWST’s instruments, called the Near-Infrared Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, both of which can simply decode chemical composition of faraway worlds stuck in the infrared zone we can’t trespass. 

But JWST isn’t merely farsighted. It can turn on its reading glasses to scan nearby things, too. 

That’s why another team is more interested in figuring out how to navigate phenomena in our very own cosmic neighborhood. Their blueprints say they’ll characterize Jupiter’s cloud layers, winds, composition, temperature structure and even auroral activity — aka, the Jovian version of our northern lights. 

This research bit is poised to use nearly all of JWST’s groundbreaking infrared equipment: Nirspec, Niriss, as well as the Near-Infrared Camera — JWST’s alpha imager — and the Mid-Infrared Camera (MIRI), which, as you might guess, specializes in mid-infrared light detection. “Our program will thus demonstrate the capabilities of JWST’s instruments on one of the largest and brightest sources in the solar system and on very faint targets next to it,” they write in their abstract.

Some of the work on Jupiter has already been performed according to the status report for the project and observation windows continue into August. In addition, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, which is the largest in the solar system, and the extremely active Io, are also set to be examined with MIRI. The latter is particularly interesting, as the researchers hope to resolve Io’s volcanoes and compare Webb’s views to classical views

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Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter. 

NASA, ESA, CSA and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

Next up are the scientists focused on dust. But not just any dust. Stardust. 

We know dust is the main ingredient in the formation of stars and planets that decorate our universe, but we’re still foggy on the timeline they followed to bring us where we are today — especially because a lot of that crucial-to-our-existence dust is scattered in the early universe. And the early universe is illuminated purely by infrared light. 

Aha. Precisely what JWST can — and will — delve into. 

Breaking down the story of stardust means constructing an understanding of the building blocks of our cosmic universe — similar to how studying atoms opens up knowledge about chunks of matter. And as Carl Sagan once said, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” 

Perhaps JWST can aid the universe in its quest to introspect. 

Just wait until JWST sees this

Over the past many months in general, as a science writer I’ve witnessed the repetition of one striking sentiment. “Just wait until the James Webb Space Telescope sees this.” 

Not in those words, exactly, but definitely with that tone.

In April, for instance, the Hubble Space Telescope hit a record-breaking milestone when it delivered to us an image of the farthest star we’ve ever seen from the distant universe. A stellar beauty named Earendel, which aptly translates to “morning star” in Old English.

“Studying Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know,” Brian Welch, one of the discovery astronomers from Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement. 

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Earendel (indicated with arrow) is positioned along a ripple in spacetime that gives it extreme magnification, allowing it to emerge into view from its host galaxy, which appears as a red smear across the sky. 

NASA

But remember how JWST is armed to study the ancient, invisible universe? Exactly. The study authors are prepared to look at Earendel with JWST’s lens, hopefully confirm whether it really is just one stellar body and quantify what kind of dawning star it is.

JWST could also solve a mysterious puzzle posed by Neptune, our solar system’s gassy blue ornament: It’s getting colder for no apparent reason. But “the exquisite sensitivity of the space telescope’s mid-infrared instrument, MIRI, will provide unprecedented new maps of the chemistry and temperatures in Neptune’s atmosphere,” Leigh Fletcher, co-author of a study on the mystery, and planetary scientist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement

There’s also the intrigue of decoding our cosmic realm’s violent majesties: supermassive black holes — and even an odd, multibillion-year-old, burgeoning black hole ancestor.

“Webb will have the power to decisively determine how common these rapidly growing black holes truly are,” Seiji Fujimoto, one of the discovery astronomers from the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement. 

Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope Images Compared: See the Difference

See all photos

And finally, I’d say the most mind-boggling aspect of JWST — to me, at least — is that it’s currently the best shot we have at finding proof of extraterrestrial life. Aliens. 

Some scientists are even prematurely guarding against false positives of organic matter that JWST’s software might pick up, so as not to alarm the general public (me) when that day comes. But if that day comes, our jaws will undoubtedly drop to the ground and our heart rate will pick up, unambiguously deeming July 12 a mild memory. 

And even if that day doesn’t arrive, it won’t be long until NASA’s new space exploration muse sends back an image as field-altering as the Hubble’s first deep field in 1995 — one we can’t yet fathom.

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Here’s how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South

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More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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‘Big Sam’: Paleontologists unearth giant skull of Pachyrhinosaurus in Alberta

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It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.

On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.

They call it “Big Sam.”

The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

It didn’t die alone.

“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.

She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”

“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.

The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.

The discovery was a long time coming.

The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.

“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.

When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”

“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.

Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.

About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.

Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.

“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.

“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”

The genders of the two adults are unknown.

Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.

The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.

She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.

“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.

“It’s pretty exciting.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.

Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.

Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.

The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.

The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.

It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.

Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.

Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.

Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.

Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.

The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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