Why I’m not so excited by the James Webb telescope?
None of my parents got bachelor degrees, my dad studied some semesters of electrical engineering but got trapped in leftist-communist parasitic ideas and the so called (now wrongly mystified) 1968 “students” movement that ended tragically with the terrible Tlatelolco massacre.
Can’t remember the reason but my dad was not there that day but several of his friends died during the event. Coincidentally my mom, 10 years old by then, lived on one of the Tlatelolco’s complex buildings. She witness many of the tragedy from her window, soldiers entering into departments (they all ready new who lived there, in which ones lived students, and so on.), the shootings, the screams… Her uncle was a reporter that was visiting them that day and he let himself be arrested to see what was happening with people detained. He was taken to some of the “secret” torture centers and saw many abominable things done to those naive young people (not the communist leaders of course) that died and suffered as part of the cold war going on in México (my interpretation, in my country 68 events are sacred and all of them were martyrs). We ws saved by a fellow reporter that recognize him and took him out, not without a serious warning about not to publish anything.
My mom later entered to Biology at UNAM but get pregnant very soon so dropt out. Nevertheless in my house was non left wing books (my dad wouldn’t allowed after all he learned) but some science books. One of those books was a Physical Chemistry basic book that in the preliminary part presented the caloric theory of heat. As I was little when I first started to read it just because it was there and i was curious, I only read that part and no the following when the book debunked this theory of course. So I spent so many hours, days and weeks thinking into caloric, a nice compelling idea but ultimately incorrect (just as communism) and trying to convincing very one about its validity and applications (just as the 68 student movement).
The caloric theory was the standard explanation by the time another very curious boy from a long brewers family was born in 1818 by the name of James Prescott Joule.
Experimental skills of Joule are legendary and “Some historians have speculated that Joule’s experience in the art of brewing may have given him skills with experimental apparatus that his colleagues lacked.” which is very interesting in relation to how many times in science is not institualized scientist, but amateurs the ones that make real progress by taking Levy flights into the unknown (see Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for a deep and extended discussion about it).
After Joule’s experiments that demonstrate that mechanical power could be transformed into heat, the theory of the caloric fall into the in the haze of oblivion, except for introductory chapters in Physical Chemistry books and young kids minds.
Very interesting in the case of Joule, is that eventually he made a golden collaboration with William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), a highly respectable scientist that analyzed Joule’s experimental results and interpreted from theoretical perspective (the local knowledge search). From this partnership, that I consider achieved scientific criticality, a very interesting effect now known as the Joule-Thomson effect, was discovered. This effect explains how under correct conditions, an expanding gas is cooled by the expansion.
This is where our little story connect to James Webb Telescope JWST) because one of the technological improvements that allowed to capture such a nitid images is the use of an application of Joule-Thomson effect, the thermoacoustic cooling.
On the other hand some of the technology developed for the JWST mirrors are now being used in high precision oftalmologic surgery by laser. Then again the images of JWST demonstrate the effect of gravitational lensing predicted by Einstein general relativity theory.
In that sense the JWST is an amazing example of the comes and goes of basic scientific discoveries and applications. Nevertheless I’m not so excited with JWST bc it is a big (institualized) science achievement. It lacks of the adventure spirit of Joule’s discoveries. For me it is like seeing a heavy commercial expedition reaching the Everest summit. Yes it is a great achievement but it is very different from for example Solo ascent to Nanga Parbat by Reinhold Messner.
In that sense I’m much more impressed by “solo” or small scientific expeditions as the work on the thermodynamics basis of life and evolution by Karo Michaelian,
the seminal work of Sergio Mendoza (discalimber he was my postdoc supervisor, long term mentor, mountaineering team mate and dear friend) on modified gravity in general , interpreting it as an entropic force and also from the perspective of what I would call complex gravity. He has been a truly pioneer in alternative explanation to dark matter and energy.
The colossal work of Wolfram
Or even the more literal adventure of discovery in the Thor Heyerdahl’s “Ra expeditions”
And that is why I’m not so excited by the James Webb telescope.
