Infinite Cosmos: Visions From the JW Space Telescope

Out today from National Geographic is Infinite Cosmos, a gorgeous-looking book by Ethan Siegel (intro by Brian Greene). It’s about the history of the JWST, humanity’s biggest ever space telescope, a machine that allows us to peer deeper & clearer into the universe than ever before, and some of the amazing results obtained through its use.

Siegel wrote a piece about the book for Big Think, which includes an excerpt. Gravitational lensing is so cool:

Even with its unprecedented capabilities, JWST’s views of the universe are still finite and limited. The faintest, most distant objects in the cosmos — including the very first stars of all — remain invisible even in the longest-exposure JWST images acquired to date. The universe itself offers a natural enhancement, however, that can reveal features that would otherwise remain unobservable: gravitational lensing.

Whenever a large amount of mass gathers together in one location, it bends and distorts the fabric of the surrounding space-time, just as the theory of general relativity dictates. As light from background objects even farther away passes close to or through that region of the universe, it not only gets distorted but also gets magnified and potentially bent, either into multiple images or into a complete or partial ring. The foreground mass behaves as a gravitational lens. The amount of mass and how it’s distributed affect the light passing through it, amplifying the light coming from those background sources.

Infinite Cosmos is available for purchase at Amazon and Bookshop.

• astronomy
• books
• Ethan Siegel
• Infinite Cosmos
• James Webb Space Telescope
• photography
• science
• space

What Would We Experience If Earth Spontaneously Turned Into A Black Hole?

Let’s say the Earth turned into a black hole. What would happen to someone standing on the surface and for how long would it happen? From Ethan Siegel:

As spectacular as falling into a black hole would actually be, if Earth spontaneously became one, you’d never get to experience it for yourself. You’d get to live for about another 21 minutes in an incredibly odd state: free-falling, while the air around you free-fell at exactly the same rate. As time went on, you’d feel the atmosphere thicken and the air pressure increase as everything around the world accelerated towards the center, while objects that weren’t attached to the ground would appear approach you from all directions.

• black holes
• Ethan Siegel
• physics
• science