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DocLoc429 t1_j20stiw wrote

Well yeah, it's only a year old and been doing science for half that time.

Still, I'm really happy that NYT is giving Webb some attention and bringing it further into the public eye. Outreach is never a bad thing!

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SlowCrates t1_j20uyxe wrote

Can you imagine the collective mind-fuck it would be if, whilst peering deep into the cosmos, we didn't find the beginning of time, or aliens, but we started to see a familiar pattern in the stars? Can you imagine an AI analyzing faint distant images and concluding with 99.99999999999% certainty that it's seeing the same star formations in multiple places in the universe, impossible to perceive with the naked eye? The wild theories that would create, and the ones it would destroy? I think that would be more amazing and horrifying than discovering super intelligent aliens.

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MadFish4736 t1_j213a0r wrote

What it finds next god knows how amazing it’ll be

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RollinThundaga t1_j21c1te wrote

If space were curved enough, and assuming we had impossible resolution telescopes, we could look out into the univers and see the back of our own heads however many billions of light years away.

However, space has only a very slight overall curvature.

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citoloco t1_j21vokw wrote

Good grief this shiite is so misleading, Fake Color and all, this isn't what is actually out there but a fanciful Ted Turner-colorized version for popular consumption and funding

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yelahneb t1_j22p0bn wrote

"The Webb Telescope Is Just Getting Started," whispered NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, his trembling hands reaching slowly toward an enormous lever

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chadowmantis t1_j23u9j8 wrote

The colors are not there to make the pictures pretty for you. They represent whatever elements the science is focusing on in that specific picture, and serve a very important purpose.

The point of using telescopes is not to give you cool wallpapers, but to understand what's out there. Since our eyes can't tell hydrogen from whatever other element, they accentuate the colors. The colors are not completely made up, the pictures come in red, green and blue, and are then combined and sometimes made more vivid, if there's a reason for them to be.

If they mindlessly colored the images to look pretty, only for the funding, without providing any kind of useful and peer reviewed data which advances our understanding of the universe, they would not get any money from anyone, you confused, angry soul.

Go through these 6 short slides about Hubble, if you want to understand what "fake color" means. JWST is an infrared observatory, but similar shit applies to it.

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YankeeKuya t1_j246xb7 wrote

Do you get equally as enraged when a mother sees the first ultrasound of her anticipated newborn and just start yelling "FAKE!" as you run around the hospital making an ass of yourself?

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Kayne792 t1_j24m0sr wrote

Well, depends on which instruments you're talking about; Some are working subpar to expectations. And the micrometeorite damage to the platform is much higher than anticipated.

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BestCatEva t1_j25lxud wrote

This pic gives me the chills, every time I see it. The image looks….like humanoid bodies trying to get away from the camera.

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supamario132 t1_j25za60 wrote

Sometimes I love clickbait headlines. Who's this demographic that doesn't think this brand new, state of the art telescope is "just getting started"

Oh Dennis, you goober

1