Nobel physicist focuses on Hubble’s heir

Did you have a role in determining which instruments would help you address that question, and did you have the whole idea of connecting to the results of the big bang in mind?

Yes, I've been involved in this since the very first day of this project, and so I had a strong influence on both the telescope design and on the instrument package selection. But nature actually tells us what we should build. It tells us where the opportunities are, and what would pay off the best in new discoveries. So that's what we have really organized it for. We're building infrared equipment because that's what we haven't seen before, and because nature has put information we want to find out at those wavelengths.

Why is infrared so important?

The distant universe is running away from us as fast as you can imagine, at speeds that are close to the speed of light. The result of that on what we see is that the wavelengths of light that we can get are much longer than what they were when they started out. The visible and ultraviolet light that was produced by hot stars comes to us as infrared. This is what's called the redshift effect. We may see light with a wavelength 10 or 20 times as long as what it was when it started out. That's the impetus for this strange and interesting new design that we have.

What are you doing this for?

We have four major themes we think people will use this telescope to think about. One is, how did the first stars and galaxies form after the big bang? The big bang was supposed to be 13.7 billion years ago and it gave us hydrogen and helium to build the universe. And now, as you see, we've got carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the things that we're made out of. When did that all change? Probably the answer is that the first stars and galaxies were different from the ones we see today. They had giant stars that exploded and liberated the chemical elements that were created by nuclear reactions inside. So the life that we have is possible because of this first generation of stars. That's what we think. I'd like to see it.

Closer to home, people know that they want to see how stars and planets are actually made nearby. So that's again something that you need infrared telescopes to see. You know those beautiful pictures like "the Pillars of Creation"? Those are clouds of dust that obscure our view. We can't see the stars being born inside. But infrared light will penetrate through those clouds and you can see the actual formation of stars and planets.

Even closer to home, we hope to learn about our solar system and how it is that the conditions for life became possible here on the earth. We do that by examining the outer solar system and little bits that are left from the formation our our solar system — which is quite recent, you know, it's only 4.5 billion years ago instead of 13.7 billion.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

The year in space   2009's best images from space   Rover makes discovery while spinning wheels New crew to dock at space station How much real science is in ‘Avatar’? Mystery swirls around ‘dark stars’ Cassini image confirms liquid on Saturn moon Long-defunct Mars rover wheel spins Crew blasts off for Christmas space mission Earth's upper atmosphere cooling dramatically Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: