Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “The Webb Telescope’s Big Quests,” a look at the powerful new instrument’s search for the origins of the universe and evidence of extraterrestrial life, with Robert Scherrer, professor in Vanderbilt University’s physics and astronomy department and author of science fiction.
The astonishing images that have been beamed back to us by the James Webb Space Telescope, the culmination of 400 years of astronomy, represent a mere preview of all it might reveal. Come to the debut of Profs and Pints at Nashville’s Eastside Bowl to learn in depth about this scientific venture and the big questions it hopes to answer.
The speaker, Dr. Robert Scherrer, is a Vanderbilt University cosmologist who has extensively studied dark energy, dark matter, the “big bang,” and the structure of the universe. Using stunning images, he’ll give an updated, mind-blowing assessment of what we have learned from the Webb mission.
Dr. Scherrer will discuss how and why we launched the Webb Telescope, an instrument so enormous that it needed to be folded up into its launch vehicle and then unfolded while on its million-mile journey into deep space. You’ll learn in depth about the telescope’s design and how it, unlike the Hubble telescope and nearly all telescopes on earth, can see infrared light which can’t penetrate the earth’s atmosphere.
You’ll also learn why the Webb telescope’s ability to see infrared light enables it to peer back in time and see galaxies as they existed billions of years ago. In essence, it acts like a time machine, enabling us to see the galaxies at the dawn of the universe. It will allow us to better understand how the first galaxies formed and how the cosmological “dark ages” ended.
Its ability to see infrared light also enables the Webb telescope to search for extraterrestrial life by looking for the chemical signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. Will these other planets be home to great beer and excellent events like Profs and Pints? Their inhabitants should be so lucky. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: The star-forming Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. Photo by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI).