WEBVTT FILE 00:00:00.000,00:00:02.402 >>INTERVIEWER: For 26 years, the Hubble Space Telescope’s 00:00:02.402.00:00:05.672 continuing mission has captured the attention of the world with 00:00:05.672.00:00:09.710 its awe-inspiring images of strange new worlds and exotic 00:00:09.710.00:00:13.714 galaxies across the universe. And Hubble has a new image, and 00:00:13.714.00:00:17.017 here to show us the new image is Dr. Ken Carpenter at NASA’s 00:00:17.017.00:00:19.219 Goddard Space Flight Center, thanks for joining us. >>KEN: 00:00:19.219.00:00:21.588 Glad to be here, thanks for having me. >>INTERVIEWER: So for 00:00:21.588.00:00:24.858 more than a quarter century, Hubble has inspired generations 00:00:24.858.00:00:27.594 of people around the world with its views of the universe. Can 00:00:27.594.00:00:30.464 you show us this new Frontier Field image? >>KEN: I’d be glad 00:00:30.464.00:00:34.668 to. The explorations of the original starship Enterprise and 00:00:34.668.00:00:38.071 her successors have inspired many of us at Goddard to 00:00:38.071.00:00:41.742 actually go out there and examine the real final frontier 00:00:41.742.00:00:45.712 to find out what’s there in the real universe. This image that 00:00:45.712.00:00:49.182 you see here is centered on a massive cluster of galaxies 00:00:49.182.00:00:52.719 containing hundreds of galaxies in the cluster and then behind 00:00:52.719.00:00:56.556 it we see literally thousands of other galaxies in the same 00:00:56.556.00:01:00.694 field. And each of the galaxies has maybe a hundred billion 00:01:00.694.00:01:04.998 stars in it; each of those stars has likely a system of planets 00:01:04.998.00:01:08.402 around it. So there is a huge number of possible abodes of 00:01:08.402.00:01:13.073 life and maybe even new civilizations. >>INTERVIEWER: So 00:01:13.073.00:01:16.276 this image is literally taking us back to the very edge of 00:01:16.276.00:01:19.846 space and time. How is this image helping us explore the 00:01:19.846.00:01:23.283 final frontier? >>KEN: Well in order to get this image and to 00:01:23.283.00:01:27.020 look back as far as we are in it, we are using a trick of 00:01:27.020.00:01:32.659 sorts. Einstein’s theory of relativity taught us that if 00:01:32.659.00:01:36.496 light passes by a collection of mass like this nearby foreground 00:01:36.496.00:01:40.667 cluster of galaxies, it will bend, and in fact it gets 00:01:40.667.00:01:44.538 focused just like a big magnifying glass. This makes the 00:01:44.538.00:01:48.442 far-away galaxies look both larger and brighter than they 00:01:48.442.00:01:52.512 would without it. So using this technique, we are able to use 00:01:52.512.00:01:55.615 these foreground galaxies that are 4 billion light-years away 00:01:55.615.00:01:58.618 to give us bigger and brighter images of galaxies that are near 00:01:58.618.00:02:03.256 the edge of space and time more than 13 billion light-years 00:02:03.256.00:02:06.727 distant. >>INTERVIEWER: Now science fiction like Star Trek 00:02:06.727.00:02:10.197 has stretched our imaginations for 50 years. The starship 00:02:10.197.00:02:14.267 Enterprise and its successors explored hundreds of new worlds. 00:02:14.267.00:02:16.737 How does Hubble compare in seeking out life and new 00:02:16.737.00:02:19.873 civilizations? >>KEN: Well we’re working on it, we haven’t found 00:02:19.873.00:02:23.443 direct evidence for life yet, but we’re making great progress 00:02:23.443.00:02:26.279 on finding planets around other stars and starting to 00:02:26.279.00:02:30.784 characterize them. We started off by looking at stellar 00:02:30.784.00:02:34.554 nurseries, these areas of the sky where there are intense 00:02:34.554.00:02:38.258 concentrations of dust and gas that are coming together forming 00:02:38.258.00:02:41.495 stars and forming planetary systems around them. So we’re 00:02:41.495.00:02:44.865 actually looking at stars and planetary systems in the process 00:02:44.865.00:02:49.703 of formation. We’ve also been able to look at atmospheres of 00:02:49.703.00:02:53.040 planets around other stars by observing the light coming from 00:02:53.040.00:02:56.009 the parent star going through the atmosphere of the star and 00:02:56.009.00:03:00.480 looking at the intensity of the starlight versus color. And 00:03:00.480.00:03:03.650 doing that recently, we sent a release out on Wednesday that 00:03:03.650.00:03:07.654 showed two planets that are devoid of light element 00:03:07.654.00:03:10.691 atmospheres that might otherwise smother it and therefore might 00:03:10.691.00:03:13.493 be good candidates for having an Earth-like atmosphere with 00:03:13.493.00:03:18.932 oxygen in it. So we’re both seeing planets around other 00:03:18.932.00:03:22.502 stars with Hubble and other telescopes, but we’re now also 00:03:22.502.00:03:26.239 starting to characterize them. And we continue the search for 00:03:26.239.00:03:29.309 signatures of life itself both with Hubble, we will with the 00:03:29.309.00:03:33.213 Webb Telescope when it launches in 2018, and the TESS telescope 00:03:33.213.00:03:37.784 which actually launches sooner in 2017 will actually find more 00:03:37.784.00:03:41.955 planets, more targets for us to look at. >>INTERVIEWER: Now Star 00:03:41.955.00:03:44.691 Trek helped us imagine many wonders out there in the final 00:03:44.691.00:03:47.527 frontier. What are some of the coolest things Hubble has seen? 00:03:47.527.00:03:51.498 >>KEN: Oh we’ve seen so much, it’s hard to pick, but for 00:03:51.498.00:03:57.170 example, we’ve seen colliding galaxies where two galaxies pass 00:03:57.170.00:04:00.173 by each other, sometimes through each other, and they make all 00:04:00.173.00:04:03.710 these beautiful patterns and arcs of life and kick off new 00:04:03.710.00:04:07.080 epochs of star formation. We see black holes shooting out 00:04:07.080.00:04:11.151 tremendous jets of material at really high speeds, hundreds of 00:04:11.151.00:04:14.054 thousands of miles per hour, shooting over incredible 00:04:14.054.00:04:18.258 distances. And of course we’ve looked deep into the universe, 00:04:18.258.00:04:21.528 back toward the beginning of the universe near the Big Bang in 00:04:21.528.00:04:25.832 several directions in the sky now. And one of the biggest 00:04:25.832.00:04:29.236 mysteries, the most exciting results to come out of this – 00:04:29.236.00:04:32.239 Hubble along with other ground and space observatories has 00:04:32.239.00:04:36.376 confirmed that the expansion of the universe is actually 00:04:36.376.00:04:39.980 increasing with time, which is something we didn’t expect. We 00:04:39.980.00:04:43.183 expect it would slow down because of gravity. So it’s as 00:04:43.183.00:04:46.753 if you took a ball, threw it up in the air, and instead of it 00:04:46.753.00:04:51.324 slowing down and coming back to you, it started to speed up. It 00:04:51.324.00:04:54.694 makes no sense, we have no idea what causes it. We call the 00:04:54.694.00:04:57.664 cause “dark energy” but “dark” just means we don’t understand 00:04:57.664.00:05:01.535 it. So it’s a big puzzle. It’s going to take a lot of work in 00:05:01.535.00:05:05.038 the future to figure out what’s actually doing it. Hubble’s 00:05:05.038.00:05:07.941 working on it; we’re working on some new telescopes; Webb will 00:05:07.941.00:05:11.144 look at it; also there’s a telescope in the mid 2020s 00:05:11.144.00:05:15.916 called WFIRST that we intend to launch to study dark energy in 00:05:15.916.00:05:19.853 detail and maybe solve the mystery of what’s causing the 00:05:19.853.00:05:23.156 expansion of the universe to get ever and ever faster. 00:05:23.156.00:05:27.527 >>INTERVIEWER: Now how has science fiction like Star Trek 00:05:27.527.00:05:28.862 inspired you? >>KEN: It was critical actually I think. Of 00:05:28.862.00:05:30.197 course in the 60s there were the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo 00:05:30.197.00:05:31.531 programs to help inspire. I had read science fiction in general 00:05:31.531.00:05:32.899 which got me interested in the field. But Star Trek is perhaps 00:05:32.899.00:05:34.234 the single most important thing in getting me to go into a 00:05:34.234.00:05:39.239 scientific field. And in particular I remember an episode 00:05:53.353.00:05:57.090 where they gave the name of a star, and I got curious about 00:05:57.090.00:05:59.726 whether it was a real star of whether they just made it up. 00:05:59.726.00:06:03.029 And I went to the library, picked up an astronomy book, 00:06:03.029.00:06:05.899 confirmed it was a real star, but in the process of course 00:06:05.899.00:06:09.236 opened up an astronomy book and saw some wondrous stuff in there 00:06:09.236.00:06:14.007 and I was hooked. And I never looked back from that date in 00:06:14.007.00:06:19.479 the mid 60s and knew I wanted to be an astronomer and was able to 00:06:19.479.00:06:22.315 make the dream come true. >>INTERVIEWER: And where can we 00:06:22.315.00:06:26.419 see more of Hubble’s amazing images? >>KEN: I would go first 00:06:26.419.00:06:30.423 of all to the main Hubble website, nasa.gov/hubble. You 00:06:30.423.00:06:35.729 can also follow us on Twitter at handle NASA_Hubble. And you’ll 00:06:35.729.00:06:39.699 see a constant stream of new material coming out of there and 00:06:39.699.00:06:43.036 links to other resources as well. Lots of information out 00:06:43.036.00:06:45.739 there for your enjoyment. >>INTERVIEWER: Great, thanks for 00:06:45.739.00:06:49.075 joining us. >>KEN: Thank you.