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- Hi. I'm Ellen Stofan,
also known as Dr. E.

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- And I'm Thomas Zurbuchen,
also known as Dr. Z.

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- And welcome to another
episode of "E.Z. Science."

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We're here at the Smithsonian's

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National Air and Space Museum,

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standing in front of the backup mirror

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to the Hubble Space Telescope.

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But we're not here really
to talk about Hubble.

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There's another big launch coming up.

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- [Thomas] We're talking about

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the launch of the James
Webb Space Telescope.

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Many people have talked
about it as the next Hubble

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because Hubble has been transformative

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in our understanding of the sky.

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- And it's fun to be here

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in front of the backup mirror for Hubble.

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And so for people who are wondering,

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"Why doesn't this thing
actually look like a mirror?"

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It's the backup mirror.

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It's two plates of glass
that are about an inch thick

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with that supporting structure in between.

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And if it had launched,

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it would have been coated
in a reflective material,

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so it would have looked
more like a mirror.

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These telescopes use these
big mirrors to collect light,

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which then go into an instrument.

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So spectrographs are
really cool instruments,

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and they've been used in
astronomy and astrophysics

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for over 100 years.

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- Spectrographs, of course,

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having the ability of
splitting up the light

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and looking at the composition of light

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and actually the originator,

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whether it's what gases is and so forth.

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And frankly, spectrograph
also here in the museum.

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- In fact, we have over 100
years' worth of spectrographs

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here at the Air and Space Museum.

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In 1929, Edwin Hubble
actually used a spectrograph

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to determine the fact that
the universe was expanding.

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We have a spectrograph
from the Hale Telescope

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at the Palomar Observatory in California

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that was used from the 1950s to the 1970s

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to look at the redshift of
galaxies, of white dwarfs.

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And that helped us, again,

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understand the expansion of the universe.

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But I'm really fascinated with this issue

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of using a spectrograph
to really understand

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what materials things are
made of, how are they moving,

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and really just collecting that light,

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which James Webb will do,

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from very early in the
history of the universe.

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- If you compare Hubble with Webb,

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there's really two fundamental changes.

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The first one is,

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if you look at the mirror,
this is 2.4 meters.

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It's like this, roughly,
kind of my height.

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You look at Webb, and unfolded,
it's six and a half meters.

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It's like three of me, or
more, with the hand up.

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So the other thing that's really exciting,

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the light that we're looking at

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is actually much, much colder.

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- And this idea that this
super-cold temperature

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and collecting this light
with this big mirror

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is actually allowing
you to look back in time

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as much as 100 million
years after the Big Bang,

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which in the history of the
universe, over 13 billion years,

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100 million years is really
soon after the big bang.

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- Recently, I looked at the
album of one of my children

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with all the pictures.

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And I imagined, suppose I didn't
know about the first year,

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what I would miss about
the story of my child

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that's now in college.

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And I think of the universe that way.

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We have not seen those pictures.

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- One of the questions I've
always found the craziest

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is this issue of black holes
at the centers of galaxies.

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Right now, pretty much
every galaxy we've looked at

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has a black hole at the center.

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And so we are really curious

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about these very early galaxies.

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Did they already have black holes?

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Do black holes come later?

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Do you start with a black
hole? How does that work?

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And that's one of the questions

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that JWST is really gonna go after.

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And we're actually gonna
be able to use JWST

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to start looking at the
composition of atmospheres

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of planets around other stars.

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And that's really critical in
this issue of "Are we alone?"

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- Absolutely.

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Looking at especially cold atmospheres

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and stars that are there, we
can see molecular components,

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things that relate to life here on Earth,

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oxygen and so forth.

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Could you just imagine that?

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We're about to open that door.

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- And what I think people
don't necessarily appreciate is

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the way we've had to push
technology to get to this point.

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- Absolutely.

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And that's the beauty of
doing amazing new science.

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We develop new technologies.

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So consider this technology that was used

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to shape the mirrors correctly.

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That technology right now is being used

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by eye surgeons around the world.

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That's just one of the many benefits

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that come from a development like this.

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- So exciting,

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and I wish I could be with
you at the launch, Thomas,

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but it's a little bit far away.

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And so can you tell us
where the launch is?

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- Yeah. It's from French
Guiana, a town called Kourou.

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It's right at that
coastal community there,

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where the European Spaceport is.

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We're fly on an Ariane 5

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provided by the European Space Agency.

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The Canadian Space Agency also
provided an instrument here.

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So we're excited and ready for it.

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- Just like Hubble, JWST is gonna help us

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rewrite textbooks for years to come.

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Stay tuned.

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Watch for the launch of the
James Webb Space Telescope,