Originally Posted By TomSawyer In the face of the anti-science news stories floating around out there thanks to one of our major political parties I thought I'd share something I just learned about. The James Webb Space Telescope will be in orbit in 2018, and it is going to be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has already shown us far more than we'd ever expected to see -what will 100 times the magnification do for us? We may be able to directly observe planets orbiting other stars. But that's not the big story. The big story is that we are going to be able to see the very first stars and galaxies forming. We'll be able to look into the very earliest years of the Universe. <a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/" target="_blank">http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/</a> I don't know why I felt like I needed to share this, other than the fact that it is really cool.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I'm so glad you did! This will be awesome. The images from Hubble have been incredible, can't wait to see what the new telescope will produce.
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 Wow! Maybe we'll be able to see much more detail on planets than ever before? I love learning about this stuff. I will be really happy and amazed when we finally discover a planet with life on it.
Originally Posted By fkurucz "I will be really happy and amazed when we finally discover a planet with life on it." That might be kind of hard to do with just a telescope. We might find some worlds that are capable of supporting life.
