Scientists at Yale University and the University of Connecticut will soon be poring over data from the new, powerful James Webb Space Telescope.
“I’m actually just blown away. It’s more spectacular than I could have imagined,” Jonathan Trump, UConn associate professor of physics, said in describing the images and information released so far.
Trump hopes to use data from the space telescope to solve a chicken-or-egg question involving galaxies and the black holes at their centers.
“Does the galaxy form first, and then the black hole slowly form at its center? Or do we start with black hole seeds, or black hole eggs, and then galaxies form around them? How do galaxies and their black holes form and grow over almost 14 billion years of cosmic time?” Trump asked.
He is part of a group of scientists receiving data Thursday, July 14, from observations the telescope has already made.
On Friday, Trump will fly to the Space Telescope Science Institute to meet with fellow researchers to discuss the information gathered.
Yale,Astronomy Department Chair Priyamvada Natarajan was traveling Wednesday but said in an email that she has made many predictions that can be tested or validated by data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Natarajan said she has a lot riding on the data.
