The successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provoked a few odd thoughts, and I do mean odd.
1) First
The JWST has been placed in orbit around the second of five LaGrange points (L2) from where it is best shielded from thermal effects of the sun, the earth and the moon. Its Arianne rocket served so well that the JWST placement took less fuel than had been anticipated which means that a twenty-year service life expectancy has been extended by a greater than planned fuel reserve to a service life expectancy of thirty years.
Still, the fuel will eventually be consumed and when that time approaches, what will happen? Will the last of the JWST fuel be used to propel the telescope away from L2 in order to vacate the L2 point for a successor observation tool?
2) Second
Imagine the JWST intercepting infrared photons from thirteen billion light years away. Picture one single photon having been generated that far away and having then avoided annihilation by dust, by stars, by planets, by moons, by galaxies, by galactic lensing, by who knows what else and after having survived all of those perils, suddenly:
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSSSSSSSSS........THUP!!!
It gets caught in and annihilated by the JWST.
There's some small part of my sense of justice which suggests that just ain't fair.
It's going to happen anyway though and with several decades of such future events, we're going to learn a lot.
3) Third
Wouldn't it be a hoot if an accumulated image from that far away showed a collection of stars positioned to spell out the message "Hi"?
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