NASA engineer breaks down new Webb telescope images

NASA engineer Mike Menzel breaks down the new Pillars of Creation images from the James Webb Space Telescope, showing the earliest moments in the lives of stars, with CNN's Jake Tapper. #CNN #News

47 comments

    1. @A R

      Yea. It’s not like you can fly around it. Or circumnavigate the earth, the same way thousands have done for years. 😕

  1. Dr. Menzel, your clear and illuminating explanations of the images taken by Webb are very appreciated. I worked in space sciences on the hardware side, it’s wonderful to get the results of our (engineers and techs) work presented to a wide audience in such a helpful way.

    1. He’s really dumbing things down,unfortunately, for an audience who failed every math and science course.

    2. @David B You need to come up with something better than, “I know you are, but what am I”.. Let’s see what that noodle in-between your ears can come up with!

  2. Very clear explanation and I’m at awe. That last question sent me over the moon… No pun intended😊 I hope if there are other life forms out there that they are looking for us too

    1. @DwayneShaw1 Fermi’s Paradox is presumptuous and flawed. For one thing, Fermi presumed that alien civilizations want to be found… that they aren’t hiding their presence in some way. Also, we haven’t sampled very much of the universe yet. It’s insanely huge. Dr. Jill Tarter explained it nicely: she said “If I go to the seashore and dip a cup into the water, and when I look in the cup I don’t see any fish, then does that mean that there aren’t any fish in the ocean?”

    2. They’d take one look at us and say “nah – these species are too primitive. They can’t even sustain peace! Either they bully their way to stay in power or grab land that’s not even theirs. Let’s go somewhere else.” 😅😂

    3. This Bible settled thebmatter of other life forms a long time ago.
      1 Corinthians 15:40
      There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

  3. This makes me think of my mom out in the yard with her telescope in the middle of the night freezing 🥶 .. she has a nice telescope it has a huge tripod that takes multiple people to move.

  4. “Does it make you think there’s a Force you can’t comprehend?” Well, yes and no Jake, we do understand Strong Force (fusion aka creation of new elements) and Weak Force (fission aka radiation, plasma, heat, light) we understand the forces Electromagnetism (gluons give elements mass) and Gravity (brings mass together) but the Force we’re still tring to figure out is Dark Matter and how it’s force Dark Energy interact with them. So no, Jake, people who understand physics don’t use the “God of the gaps” fallacy aka “We don’t understand it, therefore god did it”, they study it without presuppositions or bias. Anyone who looks at those pics and thinks “god did it” has never read a Cosmology or Astrophysics text in their life and think “Thoughts & Prayers” are the answer to every problem.

    1. Inst the first time I saw this I was like 🙂☺️👌👨🏾

  5. Amazing … I am not sure mankind has the ability to really understand these kind of ‘existential’ facts. Anyhow: great stuff!

  6. “Every dot is a galaxy?!”
    Said with adorable child-like wonder ❤️
    Yeah, this is what it’s truly like to have those “geek” moments, “oh… right… wow, now I understand!”

    1. @Danny Archer True. The universe may be as large as 93 billion light years across. Or possible even larger.

    2. Yes, that very fact is worthy of a whole hour’s interview! Especially given how small an area that image covers.

  7. I don’t think I will ever be able to wrap my head around how immense the universe is. The Deep Field image is the perfect example. It shows thousands of galaxies, yet astronomers say that image is the equivalent of looking at a grain of sand being held at arms length.

    1. No one can – there’s been a time or two that i’ve gotten physically dizzy staring at the night sky and contemplating its extent. This is also the 2nd most prominent reason people refute evolution (the 1st being religious indoctrination), they can’t grasp the eons involved, or understand the ‘power’ of vast time – which makes anything plausible inevitable.

  8. I was amazed when I learnt that there are far more stars and planets in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach on earth. I doubt that we are the only planet that has life forms of some kind. But whether they have the ability to travel to our planet is debatable, and why would they want to? We would be millions of years behind them in evolution and would not be able to comprehend their science. It would be like trying to teach a T-Rex string theory.

  9. I wish he would’ve mentioned the fact that some of those gravitationally magnified galaxies are the same galaxy just projected in multiple areas of the sky due to the lensing.

  10. This is amazing. Stars are BORN! It’s like the Pillars of Creation are big wombs. Maybe that’s anthropomorphizing too much, but it’s very moving to think that life itself, we, come from the stars.

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