Webb’s First Deep Field
Jul 12, 2023
President Joe Biden unveiled this image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 during a White House event on July 11, 2022. One year later, the James Webb Space Telescope has changed the way we see the universe. From new views of old subjects to discoveries on the chemical composition of exoplanets, Webb has helped us gather clues about the origins of our own solar system and beyond.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/webb-s-first-deep-field
Webb Celebrates First Year of Science With Close-up on Birth of Sun-like Stars
Jul 12, 2023
From our cosmic backyard in the solar system to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, NASA has released Webb’s image of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.
“In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time. Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Webb is an investment in American innovation but also a scientific feat made possible with NASA’s international partners that share a can-do spirit to push the boundaries of what is known to be possible. Thousands of engineers, scientists, and leaders poured their life’s passion into this mission, and their efforts will continue to improve our understanding of the origins of the universe – and our place in it.”
The new Webb image released today features the nearest star-forming region to us. Its proximity at 390 light-years allows for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space.
“On its first anniversary, the James Webb Space Telescope has already delivered upon its promise to unfold the universe, gifting humanity with a breathtaking treasure trove of images and science that will last for decades,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “An engineering marvel built by the world’s leading scientists and engineers, Webb has given us a more intricate understanding of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system than ever before, laying the groundwork for NASA to lead the world in a new era of scientific discovery and the search for habitable worlds.”
Webb’s image shows a region containing approximately 50 young stars, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen, represented in red, dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world. In contrast, the star S1 has carved out a glowing cave of dust in the lower half of the image. It is the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than the Sun.
“Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi allows us to witness a very brief period in the stellar lifecycle with new clarity. Our own Sun experienced a phase like this, long ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another’s star’s story,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, who served as Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, since before the telescope’s launch and through the first year of operations.
Some stars in the image display tell-tale shadows indicating protoplanetary disks – potential future planetary systems in the making.
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A Full Year, Across the Full Sky
From its very first deep field image, unveiled by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Nelson live at the White House, Webb has delivered on its promise to show us more of the universe than ever before. However, Webb revealed much more than distant galaxies in the early universe.
“The breadth of science Webb is capable of exploring really becomes clear now, when we have a full year’s worth of data from targets across the sky,” said Eric Smith, associate director for research in the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters and Webb program scientist. “Webb’s first year of science has not only taught us new things about our universe, but it has revealed the capabilities of the telescope to be greater than our expectations, meaning future discoveries will be even more amazing.” The global astronomy community has spent the past year excitedly poring over Webb’s initial public data and getting a feel for how to work with it.
Beyond the stunning infrared images, what really has scientists excited are Webb’s crisp spectra – the detailed information that can be gleaned from light by the telescope’s spectroscopic instruments. Webb’s spectra have confirmed the distances of some of the farthest galaxies ever observed, and have discovered the earliest, most distant supermassive black holes. They have identified the compositions of planet atmospheres (or lack thereof) with more detail than ever before, and have narrowed down what kinds of atmospheres may exist on rocky exoplanets for the first time. They also have revealed the chemical makeup of stellar nurseries and protoplanetary disks, detecting water, organic carbon-containing molecules, and more. Already, Webb observations have resulted in hundreds of scientific papers answering longstanding questions and raising new ones to address with Webb.
The breadth of Webb science is also apparent in its observations of the region of space we are most familiar with – our own solar system. Faint rings of gas giants appear out of the darkness, dotted by moons, while in the background Webb shows distant galaxies. By comparing detections of water and other molecules in our solar system with those found in the disks of other, much younger planetary systems, Webb is helping to build up clues about our own origins – how Earth became the ideal place for life as we know it.
"With a year of science under our belts, we know exactly how powerful this telescope is, and have delivered a year of spectacular data and discoveries,” said Webb Senior Project Scientist Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “We've selected an ambitious set of observations for year two — that builds on everything we've learned so far. Webb's science mission is just getting started — there's so much more to come."
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-celebrates-first-year-of-science-with-new-image
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Congressman has grim take after access to UFO footage: 'We can't handle it'
July 12, 2023 6:00am EDT
A Tennessee lawmaker issued a dire warning after claiming to have seen classified UFO footage that hasn't been released to the public.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., speculated extraterrestrial life forms could have technology that humanity "can't handle" during an appearance on the "Event Horizon" podcast.
"If they’re out there, they’re out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette," Burchett said.
"And if they can travel light years or at the speeds that we’ve seen, and physics as we know it, fly underwater, don't show a heat trail, things like that, then we are vastly out of our league."
Burchett is a sitting member on the House Oversight Committee, which has held hearings about potential threats of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), a government-derived term for UFOs.
"We can’t handle it," Burchett said during his podcast appearance about potential alien tech. "We couldn't fight them off if we wanted to. That's why I don't think they're a threat to us, or they would already have been."
His startling comments came after whistleblower David Grusch, a decorated Air Force veteran who is considered by many to be credible, came forward with claims the government has been running a secret UFO retrieval program.
The House Oversight Committee is preparing a hearing to discuss Grusch's unverified claims. Burchett and fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida will lead the committee's investigation.
Susan Gough, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, told Fox News Digital in a previous email June 6 there is no "verifiable information to substantiate the claims."
Since Grusch's shocking claims, other "high-level" government whistleblowers with "high clearances" have come forward and backed Grush's claims, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told NewsNation in an interview at the end of June.
"We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can… And, frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs… fearful of harm coming to them," Rubio said during the interview.
While he didn't comment on whether he thinks the claims are credible, Rubio said, "What I think we owe is just a mature, you know, understanding, listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions."
The same week as Rubio's interview, the Senate approved new language in the Intelligence Authorization Act to further transparency and investigative efforts and protect whistleblowers.
Any employee under contract that "has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the" government relating to UAP has 60 days to notify Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the updated language says.
Kirkpatrick is the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is a specialized department within the Pentagon that investigates UFOs.
His office is investigating over 800 cases of UAP, but only 2%-5% of the cases are "truly anomalous."
NASA is also investigating UFOs, which is running on a separate but parallel track as AARO.
Both NASA and AARO are expected to release separate reports this summer.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/congressman-has-grim-take-after-access-to-ufo-footage-we-cant-handle-it
Building blocks of Mars life? Perseverance rover digs up diverse set of organic molecules on the Red Planet
July 12. 2023
NASA's Perseverance rover has found a diverse menagerie of organic molecules in a Martian crater, a new study reports.
Organic compounds are molecules composed of carbon, and often include other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. Previously, scientists had detected several types of organic molecules of Martian origin — in meteorites blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts that landed on Earth, and in Gale Crater on the Red Planet, which NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring since 2012.
"They are an exciting clue for astrobiologists, since they are often thought of as building blocks of life," study lead author Sunanda Sharma, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com.
However, "importantly, they can be created by processes not related to life," Sharma emphasized. As such, investigating what organic molecules exist on the Red Planet and how they were created is key to understanding what may or may not be linked to life on Mars.
"As planetary scientists and astrobiologists, we are very careful with laying out claims — claiming that life is the source of organics or possible biosignatures is a last-resort hypothesis, meaning we would need to rule out any non-biological source of origin," Sharma said.
In the new study, Sharma and her colleagues analyzed data from Perseverance. In February 2021, the rover landed within Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake basin that prior work suggested displayed high potential for past habitability. The crater floor also possesses clays and other minerals that may preserve organic materials.
Specifically, the scientists examined data from the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument onboard Perseverance. SHERLOC is the first tool on Mars capable of conducting fine-scale mapping and analysis of organic molecules.
The researchers focused on SHERLOC data from Máaz and Séítah, two rock formations on the Jezero Crater floor. When ultraviolet light from SHERLOC illuminates organic compounds, they can glow much like material beneath a blacklight. The fingerprint of wavelengths in the glow from a molecule can help identify it.
Sharma and her colleagues found signs of organic molecules in all 10 targets that Perseverance drilled into at Máaz and Séítah, covering a span of time from at least about 2.3 billion to 2.6 billion years ago. These "point to the possibility that building blocks of life could have been present for a long time on the surface of Mars, in more than one place," Sharma said.
The scientists discovered evidence of many different classes of organic molecules. These occurred in a variety of patterns in space within Máaz and Séítah, suggesting they might have originated from a number of different minerals and mechanisms of formation. These organic compounds mostly appeared connected to minerals linked to water.
"Seeing that the possible organic signals differ in terms of type, number of detections and distribution between the two units of the crater floor was surprising and exciting," Sharma said. "That opens the possibility of different formation, preservation or transportation mechanisms across the crater and, more broadly, the surface of Mars."
The scientists could not identify specific organic molecules. "To confirm the presence of organics and their specific types, we would need the samples to be returned to Earth," Sharma said. "That's our goal."
The scientists detailed their findings online today (July 12) in the journal Nature.
https://www.space.com/perseverance-rover-organic-molecules-mars
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06143-z
3 dead, 14 injured in Greyhound bus crash in Illinois
Jul. 12, 2023 at 4:17 AM PDT
ST. LOUIS (KMOV/Gray News) - A Greyhound bus crash involving multiple semi-trucks left three dead and 14 injured.
Illinois State Police told News 4 the Greyhound bus hit three tractor-trailers that were parked in the off ramp on a rest stop on westbound I-70 just before 2 a.m. Wednesday. Officials said the Greyhound bus was traveling from Indianapolis to St. Louis.
Authorities confirmed three people on the bus were killed and 14 were seriously injured in crash, involving the Greyhound bus and multiple semi-trucks. They also stated that no one in the trucks were injured.
Four were transported on a helicopter and 10 more were rushed to the local hospitals by ambulance.
The bus was believed to be carrying about 30 people, including the driver, the Associated Press reported.
Police did not immediately release details about those who were injured and killed.
A truck driver said he was jolted awake when his truck was hit on the rear driver’s side. He said he woke up “in the air” and thought it was a dream.
“I was sleeping, and I kind of woke up in the air, getting thrown around in there,” recalled David Cherno.
After realizing what happened, he said he helped get people out of the bus before responders arrived on the scene.
“We pulled the people out of the bus, and then the bus tires started to catch fire, so I ran and got my extinguisher,” said Cherno.
Greyhound bus officials released a statement saying, “We can confirm an incident occurred this morning involving Greyhound schedule number 1675 traveling from Indianapolis to St. Louis. Multiple passengers, including our driver, have been transported to the hospital. Our primary concern is ensuring we care for our passengers and driver at this time. We are working closely with local authorities and a relief bus is on the way for passengers.”
All westbound lanes and the ramp to the rest area reopened around noon.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it will investigate the crash.
https://www.kolotv.com/2023/07/12/3-dead-14-injured-greyhound-bus-crash-illinois/