Looking into the astonishing universe with the James Webb telescope

James Webb telescope looks into the origin of the universe and beyond. Echo opinion letter published in The Washington Post:

The Webb telescope is astonishing. But the universe is even more so.

This new amazing tool can’t do everything, but it’s capturing some of the first light emitted after the big bang, and that is already revealing wonders

In his August 7, Outlook essay, “An astronomical tool to unlock a wondrous universe,” Joel Achenbach posed one of the most fundamental questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? Is “nothing” possible? 

W.R. for The Washington Post

The James Webb Space Telescope, though unable to answer such questions, does something different. The telescope inspires questions. Here are a few.

• If time began at the big bang, does it make sense to ask what preceded that kick-starting event?
• Is it conceivable the universe was self-caused rather than brought about by a transcendental creator?
• If the human species is the only conscious, highly intelligent life form, why, then, do we live alone in such a massive universe?
• If there are intelligent alien life forms, how might that impact our sense of self-exceptionalism and purpose, especially if the aliens’ origin stories started millions of years before ours, making them unimaginably advanced?
• What are so-called dark matter and dark energy, which compose 95 percent of the universe? 
• The human species will become extinct by a cosmic event: our sun enlarging to a red giant, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies colliding, the universe dying through the increasing disorder of entropy, or otherwise. Will our extinction matter, or are we incidental?

Many other such questions exist.

Keith Tidman, Bethesda Maryland