Comments by "H. de Jong" (@h.dejong2531) on "How the James Webb Space Telescope Will Unfold the Universe | John C. Mather | TED" video.

  1. All for a better understanding of the universe.
    4
  2. False. This project is far too public to hide anything.
    2
  3. We're not assuming that at all. There's an entire field of science (exobiology) investigation other ways life could have formed, and what kind of signature that would leave. One of the things they found is that other chemistries (i.e. not using carbon and oxygen) have big chemical disadvantages (more energy needed, fewer combinations of elements possible) that mean they can't compete with 'our' chemistry.
    2
  4. the chances of that happening are really low though.
    1
  5.  @dingo23451  The reason "we still don't have pictures" has been known and planned for years: they're still commissioning the telescope. JWST was built to withstand micrometeoroid impacts: this is not the first mission to L2, so we already know what to expect. The hit that was in the news recently produces a just-about-noticeable change in the images.
    1
  6. No.
    1
  7. Scientists use the scientific method. Any claim must be supported by evidence. We haven't found evidence for alien life, so no scientist will say "there's life out there".
    1
  8.  @redlightrunner930   JWST is 1.5 million km away. For radio, that's practically next door. Cell service is short-range radio, with a tiny antenna and a $30 receiver in your phone. The cell system is built deliberately to have short range, because the shorter the range, the more cell towers you can install without them interfering with each other, and the more users you can serve. Radio waves don't travel well through solid obstacles, so each wall or hill between you and the cell tower reduces your signal.  NASA uses a series of giant dish antennas (the Deep Space Network) to receive signals from spacecraft like JWST and Voyager, it builds the best receiver electronics money can buy ($100 million each), and they have a clear line of sight without obstacles between transmitter and receiver. You can verify this yourself: every radio link ever built has a link budget: this is an equation that tells you how much transmitter power you need to receive the signal over the distance you need.
    1
  9.  @redlightrunner930  images from Hubble, JWST and others are at the Mikulski archive for space telescopes. Data from planetary missions is in the Planetary Data System. Both have public websites where you can access the raw data from all experiments.
    1
  10. All calibration images will be published at the end of the commissioning process.
    1