Science and Technology Editor Rob Barrie talks to Dr Wilkins about his upcoming research with the James Webb Telescope.

Dr Stephen Wilkins and his team at the University of Sussex will be among the world’s first scientists to use the recently launched James Webb Telescope to help unravel the mysteries of the early universe. At the end of January, Webb – dubbed the successor to Hubble – reached its final position 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, meaning work can soon begin on the most advanced telescope scientists have built. Dr Wilkins, who has been running simulation models of the universe in Sussex since Hubble’s efficiency plateaued, is eager to focus on the observational side of astronomy again. He and his team will search for the very first galaxies born in our universe, as he explains:

“We know that when we look out into the universe, we are actually looking back in time, because light takes a while to reach us, and so if we can look far enough, we can see the very first stars and galaxies. to form in our universe. Our aim here at Sussex is to harness the imagery [from Webb], to actually find these galaxies. We’re part of 7 different teams that have spent time on the telescope, and so our job on many of those teams is to develop the software to find the faintest galaxies, because we know that the galaxies we’re interested in [are] are going to be the ones that are very faint, they’re not near, they’re very far away, so we’re looking for the very small fuzzy spots. What we’re really interested in is developing software to find these galaxies, and then once we find [them], trying to understand what we can learn from them. We’re really on the discovery side here at Sussex, that’s what matters to us, leaving other elements of tracking to other team members.

Webb is the result of an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, and is the latest in a long line of orbiting telescopes. Dr. Wilkins explains how technologically advanced Webb is compared to his predecessors:

“Webb will be ten to a hundred times better than his predecessors. It’s very modern so it has very sensitive instrumentation and it’s way out in space. All of these things are especially important when looking at very faint objects. Obviously you want to avoid any additional light sources like the Sun and the Earth [and] you obviously want as big a telescope as possible to collect as much light. Probably the main thing that makes it different from other telescopes, including Hubble, is the fact that it doesn’t look at the light that we can see with our own eyes. […], it sees infrared light, and there are a lot of good scientific reasons why we want to do this. Although one of the consequences of looking in infrared light is – that’s one of the reasons why we want to move the telescope [to its final position] to keep it very cool – because any object will produce infrared light, so the colder you are, the less infrared light you will produce. This also explains why the telescope looks golden, and that’s because the mirror is actually coated with a thin layer of gold, as this reflects infrared light better than, say, aluminum, l silver or steel. Webb also goes a little further and allows us to do spectroscopy. So instead of just picking an image of the universe we can break down light from distant objects into their constituent wavelengths which allows us to do a lot more science and that’s something I think really exciting and that’s probably the biggest difference between Webb and Hubble.

As he discusses in more detail, Dr. Wilkins hopes that Webb’s discoveries may change our current view of the early universe:

“I’m not saying Webb will find out something so important [as dark matter and dark energy] because Webb is more designed to look at things smaller than the universe as a whole. [Webb will] looking through the dust, which is very important to understand how stars form and evolve, because when stars are born, they form in these very dusty clouds, and so we will be able to understand this for the first time . In my region, we obviously hope to find many galaxies close to the early universe. I don’t know if they will agree with our models or not. If they are very different, it means we have learned something new about the universe and need to change the patterns. But if they agree with the models, that’s also a success – it’s a win-win situation.

Dr Wilkins adds that Webb will also be imaging within our own solar system, and although tentative on the schedule, he explains that the potential discoveries could be immense:

“I think one of the things that will eventually capture the public’s attention, though, is the very ‘close’ science that Webb will do. In particular, Webb will look at the atmospheres of planets around other stars, and through spectroscopy he’ll tell us whether those atmospheres contain water, oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide — all those crucial molecules. It will do this for planets like Earth around other stars, […] so it’s possible that Webb will discover a planet like Earth, potentially even begin to tell us that this planet could be habitable, or could be inhabited – at least by some type of plant-like life on these planets. So it’s incredibly exciting, and these are civilization-changing discoveries. I strongly suspect that Webb won’t quite make that discovery, but it will start to allow us to experience that and maybe we’ll have to wait a little longer before we do. But if we [do] to see life somewhere else in the universe, certainly somewhere relatively close, then that tells us a lot about our universe and a lot about our place in the universe. Which, as I said, is potentially civilization-changing.

Astronomy has always captured the public’s interest, but in a time when misinformation about science is prevalent, Dr. Wilkins asserts the need for public access to Webb’s findings, which can enable scientific learning:

“I think it’s important that scientists, certainly publicly funded scientists like most astronomers, I think it’s our responsibility to make our findings as publicly available as possible. I think we know that there is a strong appetite for anything to do with space – that hasn’t really changed in fifty or sixty years! in recent years for this type of [scientific] literacy to improve, because we see so much misinformation around the pandemic. I’m not saying astronomers can really solve this problem, but if we’re able to communicate clearly what we’ve found and people believe us and trust us, hopefully that will build trust in science by general. I don’t think it’s crucial for people’s lives to know more about the universe, but I think we should allow them to know more about the universe because one of my favorite things is definitely learning things, and I think a lot of other people feel the same way, even though they wouldn’t say they like science. I think everyone enjoys learning new things, whether it’s how to dance or the basic origins of the universe. It is something that should be as accessible as possible because it brings happiness to people.