JWST - the magic and the magick

[From a waking thought I had this morning at around 04:15]

If all goes well - if - Friday 24 December will see the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, something astronomer and cosmologists have been waiting for since 2007, its original launch date. The Hubble Space Telescope gave us incredible insights into the nature and history of our Universe - the images from the Hubble Deep Fields programme showed populations of galaxies up to 50 times fainter and further than any previously known. Click on the animated photograph below to see just how amazingly huge the Universe actually is. This is the magic. The aperture on the JWST is over two and half times bigger than Hubble's; great things are expected from the JWST. From Hubble, we learned that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, narrowing it down from the 10 to 20 billion range estimated previously. 

Parked in a solar orbit 1.5m km from the Earth, with our planet positioned between it and the Sun, the JWST will deploy a massive sunshield to keep its sensitive instruments cold enough to function properly. Among the key tasks with which the JWST will help scientists is establishing Hubble's Constant - the speed with which the Universe is growing in volume. This is currently estimated at roughly 7% per billion years, based on a speed of somewhere between 65 and 77 kilometres per second per megaparsec. Science needs to narrow this range down somewhat! The speed at which the Universe is expanding will help solve the thorny issue of dark matter - the stuff that's keeps galaxies from flying apart - and dark energy - which keeps the Universe expanding at an ever-faster rate. Neither dark matter nor dark energy have ever been detected; they are still little more than mathematically calculated speculations. And yet they are believed to constitute 95% of everything in the Universe (27% dark matter, 68% dark energy, 5% everything that we can actually see). Will the JWST provide the answers?

And will the JWST reveal 'technosignatures' of advanced civilisations on other solar systems? Astro-engineering projects, such as Dyson spheres around stars, efficiently capturing their energy, for instance? Once the JWST is in orbit and functioning, teams of scientists will be able to bid competitively for telescope time to conduct experiments - the teams with the most compelling research projects will get priority.

What other wonders will JWST help science discover? New laws of physics even? 

It could do - but only on the premise that it works.

Much can go wrong with JWST, from the launch pad through to successful deployment. The '30 days of terror' from launch culminating in the unfurling of the six-layered sunscreen and activating the telescopes; the 344 known single points of failure along the road to successful deployment of the mirror; and all the unknown unknowns along the way. 

The Hubble space telescope's mirror turned out to have been incorrectly ground - it was out by 1/450th of a millimetre at the edge. This difference was catastrophic - light reflecting off the edge of the mirror focused on a different point from the light reflecting off its centre. This fault, discovered only once the telescope was up in orbit, necessitated a fix involving astronauts flying up to it in a space shuttle - a mission taking nine days. There are no space shuttles around today, and the JWST's distant orbit precludes such a repair mission should something go wrong.

Is there anything we can do to help with the success of the JWST?

Can we... pray for it? Science does not hold with the notion of magical thinking - effect without physical cause. If I apply a lateral force to the edge of my keyboard, pushing it with my fingertips, the force will cause the keyboard to slide across my desk. I cannot move the keyboard merely by thinking about it. 

Now consider the notion of intermittent faults - the ones that manifest themselves but cannot be diagnosed, be it in your car, central-heating system or laptop - these are the plague of all engineers. Suddenly, my computer's keyboard momentarily freezes. I shake the keyboard (electronics, huh?) and it unfreezes. Can I keep it from freezing just by thinking about it? To a certain degree, I feel I can...

Can we ensure the James Webb Space Telescope's successful launch, deployment and operation by sending a mass of positive thought, overruling out all possibilities of the chaotic, the chance of an unpredicted/unpredictable fault? This would be our magickal thinking, projecting good wishes towards the JWST! We shall soon find out...

[UPDATE: It worked. Perfectly. Science and spirituality, in harmony.]

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