As unveiled by President Joe Biden in a special presentation from the White House, the James Webb Space Telescope has now seen light from the edge of time, delivering the deepest-yet infrared view of the cosmos. JWST
Children are scientists in a primordial world. In those first years they’ll learn the laws of gravity, the shapeless flow of time, the first principles of love. Everything must be discovered, from peanut butter to rainstorms, and all things may as well be magic. And then, as children age, magic is stolen from them. It’s slow for some, and faster for many who feel the weight placed on the color of skin or the balance of a bank account. The vibrant world desaturates.
I believe it’s to seek the magic we all once lost. We build telescopes and probes and rovers because they are drawn in crayon by kids worldwide whose beds are starships. NASA shows them that starships are real; for one has flown past the surface of Pluto, returning images that will be taped onto bedroom walls all around the world. Telescopes show them that amid the inequity and hardship of life on Earth, we can point glass to the dark and find kingdoms of stars and citadels of light.
And sure, there are good arguments for why telescopes are investments in national leadership and security. We build them to spot that life-ending asteroid that may already be inbound to Earth. We build them to push outward on what new and evolving technologies allow, to present challenges overcome by human ingenuity, and to spark inventions whose benefits are manifold and lasting.
JWST has brought us the first light of cosmic dawn. We must now act to ensure it’s not the twilight of our ability to explore it. Ground-based astronomy is in peril, facing narrowing budgets and crowded skies. By 2045, our fleet of spaceborne observatories will have exceeded their most optimistic lifetimes. Our age of cosmic discovery will have ended, and the U.S. will cede leadership to other nations.
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