When I sat with Jane Rigby in the upstairs conference room of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis last month — a quiet respite from the crowds of families perusing the cosmic exhibits and dinosaur bones below — her eyes were warm and measured. He also wore a menagerie of gravitationally lensed galaxies.
His t-shirt was adorned with luminous realms that had been distorted by the massive structures around them, stretched and squished like marshmallows by gravitational tides that warped the fabric of space-time as if it were a pliable sea of four-dimensional rubber. This image was actually among the first photographs taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, a gold-plated, multibillion-dollar instrument located more than a million miles away. Soil — A machine where Rigby serves as chief scientist and where he himself works He just won the White House’s 2024 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It’s scenes like this manipulated quarry of galaxies that Rigby, along with the rest of the JWST crew, manages to help bring down to Earth, both figuratively and literally. The images created through this telescope have allowed scientists to deepen their nuanced research, encouraged journalists to ponder their stories endlessly, and indeed inspired designers to produce thought-provoking pieces that encapsulate concepts once confined to fiction. They have changed how we see the universe and how we mentally place ourselves in it.
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“I’m working on a telescope that does the impossible,” Rigby said. After accepting the medal. “We are measuring planets and the distant universe in impossible ways.”
Since its spectacular series of launches into space in the early hours of Christmas morning 2021, James Webb Space Telescope It was a vision. Thanks to an instrumentation set of highly sensitive infrared spectrometers and cameras, it can detect wavelengths of light from deep space that stretch like rubber bands stretched over time.
These are wavelengths that appear shifted from our perspective, moving from the blue end to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s as if they’ve been influenced by these as the universe has been, and indeed continues to be, constantly expanding over the last few billion years. Eventually, such varying wavelengths make their way into infrared waters, invisible not only to the human eye but to nearly all human telescopes; But more importantly, these signals, along with their color classification, represent objects that are physically moving away from us. Red-shifted wavelengths hold data about mysterious objects. Universe This existed when the cosmos was a kind of smaller infinity than the one we live in today. And the James Webb Space Telescope can understand this data.
He can turn this into portraits powerful enough to revolutionize science and remind us of the wonderful world we live in. Scientists were able to view an image this way. old enough to break a record The galaxy, named after the explorer’s daughter Maisie, New cracks in a brown nebulaexamine an exoplanet system This is very similar to ours. and reviving discussions like this Something about how fast it is Our universe is literally ballooning outward.
“We live our lives in constant surprise, but we’re not conscious of it,” Rigby told Space.com. “We are constantly moving back and forth between the profound and the mundane.”
Rigby remembers when he saw the first of the telescope’s images of deep space. “I was one of the first people to see this data,” he said. “We were all in a room, it looked like a conference room, and we all had to look at it at the same time.”
But the team eventually decided they needed to go even deeper into the universe with JWST’s infrared powers. They wanted to go even further back in time. So they implemented some procedures. This ran overnight. The next day, Rigby’s family was visiting and Rigby was busy doing things like making sure the guest room was ready.
“I need to make breakfast, and there should be waffles,” he said of his thought process. “Then I went upstairs still in my pajamas and took it down….and there it was.”
Not only was what he saw beautiful, but for a while he felt that this data was specifically for his eyes. “It was an incredible feeling,” Rigby explained. “‘Oh my God, we built this thing and it works. It works really well.'” But then it was time to share the excitement.
“One of the things that brought me the most joy as chief scientist was watching this joy in the scientific community,” he said. “I told everyone it was beautiful and at the same time, ‘Yes! We pointed to the right object!’ I want to show that it is.”
throughout his careerRigby has worked with many incredibly influential telescopes, including: Hubble space telescopeSpitzer, Keck Telescopes and the Chandra X-ray Telescope, the latter of which actually makes the headlines. astronomy community at this time due to current budget uncertainty. He has published more than 150 papers on his discoveries, holds both a master’s and doctorate in astronomy from the University of Arizona, and is passionate about social activism. And now, along with 18 other achievers, he has earned the White House’s highest civilian honor.
by “Presidential Medal of Freedom” White House website“It is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, bestowed upon individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the welfare, values, or security of the United States, to world peace, or to other significant social, public, or private endeavors.”
I suppose it could also be argued that the impact of the James Webb Space Telescope transcends the seemingly endless differences that plague humans. This telescope can be considered a symbol of peace in itself.
In his post-award speech, Rigby also noted previous Medal of Freedom winners, including astronauts. sally journeypolitician Harvey Milk and social activist Bayard Rustin, one of whom was the first American woman in space and two of whom were proud advocates of issues such as gay rights, civil rights and nonviolence: “I wouldn’t be here without them.”
And strikingly, his passion for science extends beyond his prestigious academic achievements. Much of his scientific contribution has to do with working diligently to broaden scientific discussion so that anyone can offer an idea or at least admire the beauty of space for a minute or two. In fact, he had just completed a long presentation at the museum just before our interview. It was for a group of dreamy-eyed kids sitting like pretzels on the floor, asking fascinating questions about the death mechanisms and death mechanisms of stars. dark matter distribution.
He emphasizes that science is not just about numbers; but primarily a self-proclaimed empiricist, he professes his love of numbers. It is also about the immutable fact that we cannot escape our humanity due to the nature of being human.
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“We’re always going back and forth between depths of about millions of solar masses. black holes “From when the universe was only a few 100 million years old,” he said. “And then we talk about personality conflicts; “It’s about how these two people couldn’t agree on who would be the first writer.”
“We can get along better, show more interest, practice better,” he said. “But science is a human endeavor by humans.”
Of course, behind JWST’s success lies a striking group of people: engineers, scientists, press officers, program coordinators, factory workers, and many more you’ll find along the supply chain path. “I am a very collaborative scientist,” Rigby said. “The most fun I have is when I get on Zoom every Tuesday during my scientific collaboration and we have some data. It’s like opening the box on YouTube.
“It’s like a vacation.”