Looming gaps in astronomers' views of the heavens could undercut the revolutionary potential of NASA's latest, greatest space telescope
Real revolutions are rarely instantaneous. Their world-changing effects—like those from the invention of the printing press or the discovery of radioactivity—typically take generations to play out. The debut of the James Webb Space Telescope may mark a similarly epochal event in human history. But whether JWST’s revolution proves momentary—or instead endures and expands for many generations to come—now depends on how we choose to chase the new cosmic vistas it has only just begun to reveal.
Consider, for instance, the case of GN-z11. First glimpsed by JWST’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, this is a galaxy that is among the earliest and most distant ever seen. To date JWST has spent at least 20 hours closely studying GN-z11—a heavy investment of the telescope’s precious observing time, yet one that still leaves open whether this faraway galaxy possesses a central supermassive black hole.
This helps explain why many astronomers are now already looking beyond JWST and its forecast 20-year lifetime to envision an ambitious series of “New Great Observatories,” each sensitive to a different type of light. Ideally, all would have to be launched in relatively rapid succession around the time JWST’s mission ends, maximizing scientific return via their overlapping operational timeframes.
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