This past Christmas is of special significance, and after more than 20 years of postponement, the Weber Space Telescope, known as the "dove king" of the scientific and technological world, was launched on the same day. Its main mission is to relay the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been operating in space for more than 30 years. This move is of extraordinary significance, and I have written a small article praising the technological feats of Hubble and Weber, and talking about some of my ideas for scientific and technological innovation of Chinese enterprises.
Hubble telescope and Webb telescope
As early as 1946, astronomer Spitzer proposed the idea of a space telescope. In the 1960s, NASA began planning the Space Telescope program with a simple and ambitious purpose: to further broaden human horizons. After decades of twists and turns and construction, the Hopkins-based space telescope went into space in 1990 and was named after the late astronomer Hubble. After many corrections and debugging, Hubble opened its 2.4-meter-caliber giant eye in near-Earth space 550 kilometers away to explore the mysteries of the deep universe in a limiting way.
The benefits of setting up telescopes in space are clear, with easy avoidance of atmospheric occlusion and human interference. But in order to obtain these benefits, Hubble was born in half a century. It took generations of astronomers and engineers to push hard and cost billions of dollars in taxpayer money to make it happen.
Although it was a lot of effort, when Hubble brought a beautiful picture of the depths of space, everyone felt that it was worth it. With further analysis, newborn and aging stars, supernovae and neutron stars, magnificent extragalactic galaxies, large-scale galaxy clusters and superclusters, hidden black holes and dark matter dark energy, countless real pictures that were unimaginable before appeared in front of mankind. Among them, the oldest galaxy GN-z11 discovered by Hubble was born 13.4 billion years ago. This time is only 400 million years away from the Big Bang, where everything originated.
Figure 1: The Crab Nebula, the remnants of a supernova explosion 6,500 light-years from Earth. Its explosive light was observed by ancient Chinese, Arab, Indian, and Japanese in 1054 and recorded in ancient books. Stargazers of the Northern Song Dynasty of China called it a "guest star".
Figure 2: The Pillar of Creation of the Eagle Nebula, located 7,500 light-years from Earth, is producing new stars inside.
Figure 3: The Broad-sided Cap Galaxy, located 28 million light-years from Earth, has a diameter of 50,000 light-years and is about 1/3 the size of the Milky Way.
Hubble has been working seriously and steadily for more than 30 years, performing more than 1 million observation missions and transmitting more than 100 TERA of information, of which a large amount of data needs to be further analyzed. Based on Hubble's output, the researchers not only contributed 18,000 academic papers, but also confirmed or falsified many major scientific speculations, and won more than one Nobel Prize.
At the same time, classic photos like "Hubble Deep Space", "Hubble Ultra Deep Space" and "Hubble Extreme Deep Space" not only make us directly realize the vastness of the universe and enrich the cosmology of human beings, but also play an unparalleled role in the popularization of science around the world.
Figure 1: "Hubble Extreme Deep Space", is a photo released in 2012. Hubble spent dozens of days fully exposing a small area of deep darkness near the constellation of Apocalypsos, and found tens of thousands of distant galaxies, each of which may contain hundreds of billions of stars, and this observation area occupies only one-twelfth of the sphere's area. From this, it can be directly understood that in the face of the vastness of the universe, the existence of the earth and human beings, even if it is described as "a drop in the ocean", is a serious exaggeration. Thinking of heaven and earth, alone but weeping.
Figure 2: The area of this observation area (XDF) is analogous to the area of the full moon.
Hubble's major discoveries are hard to count, and the number of interesting discoveries is endless, such as the Einstein Ring. The phenomenon of gravitational lensing, which is derived from relativity, is when light emitted by distant celestial bodies bends as it passes through a large gravitational field and then travels to Earth.
Therefore, astronomers speculated that if conditions were coincidental, this phenomenon might appear as a "ring" phenomenon and be seen by observers of the earth. Sure enough, after Hubble's launch, astronomers used its super detection ability to find multiple "rings", "mirror images" and "crosses" in the universe. While admiring the theory of relativity, astronomers are also extremely fortunate to have such a sharp weapon as Hubble.
Figures 1 and 2: Gravitational lens "draws" Einstein's rings and cosmic smiling faces.
Figure 3: Pegasus Cross, whose light source comes from 8 billion light-years away and the gravitational field comes from 400 million light-years away.
As an important feature of intelligent life, curiosity is always the driving force for human progress. Weber, a new telescope more imaginative than Hubble, took off more than three decades after preparing for it, officially relaying Hubble to become the new human eye. The name Weber is in honor of NASA's second director, James Weber, whose most important contribution was to preside over the moon landing project.
According to the plan, Weber will travel 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, orbiting the sun in sync with Earth. In this particular "Lagrange Second Point", Weber will permanently run in the shadow of the Earth at more than minus 200 degrees, limiting the interference of solar radiation and human activities and observing the universe deeply. At the same time, Weber adopted a near-infrared observation method and integrated a series of powerful new technologies to see more completely, farther, and more detailed than Hubble, and more traceable to the early days of the universe.
Figure 1: Weber has an aperture of 6.5 meters and collects very fine light and heat signals through a coated mirror containing gold.
Figure 2: Weber's base has five layers of shading and heat dissipation film to isolate any light and heat interference between the sun and the earth.
Figure 3: A full-size Weber model poses with its work team.
Due to the difficulty of Weber's preparation, its completion and launch are also pushed and pushed, constantly breaking the contract, and even being jokingly called "Pigeon King", the total cost has exceeded 10 billion US dollars. But in any case, Weber finally came, on Christmas Day, December 25, 2021, on a mission.
The Ariane 5 rocket carrying Weber took off at the launch site in French Guiana
After the Launch of Weber, it is also necessary to fly for one month plus several months of deployment, commissioning, and start-up, and it is expected that it will be in a working state after half a year, and the first working photo will be output.
Admittedly, no matter how powerful Weber is, he is still far away from the ultimate mystery of the universe. Then, every breakthrough in human vision is particularly worth celebrating. The inadequacies and narrowness of human cognition of individual human beings and all human beings are often enriched and corrected through external observation, which is not only in the field of natural science.
In addition, we should pay attention to China's "sky survey" space telescope, which is expected to lift off in 2024. This is the first space telescope built by Chinese self-research and self-development, and it is particularly worth looking forward to in the form of flying in parallel with the Tiangong space station to facilitate system upgrades and maintenance by Chinese astronauts.
Chinese companies "take two more steps"
Hubble's construction costs more than two billion dollars, and subsequent operations and maintenance cost billions of dollars. Weber's construction cycle has been delayed again and again, and ten billion US dollars have been invested one after another, and it is expected that the follow-up will not be less than a few billion US dollars. In the birth of two generations of space telescopes, NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and other countries continue to inject support, which also facilitates their priority use.
To tell the truth, such an amount of money, if apportioned to decades, is not small, and it is not big. If you do not consider the technical difficulty and policy level, only in terms of cost, the great undertakings such as Hubble and Weber are already things that some Chinese entrepreneurs and investors can touch.
At present, scientific and technological innovation has become the main trend in China's business community. After solving the basic needs of the economy and people's livelihood, especially under the impetus of the policy spring breeze and the capital market, whether it is a start-up company or an industrial giant, a large number of enterprises have focused on scientific and technological innovation. Of the 6,000 domestic and foreign listed companies, most emphasize similar concepts such as technology, innovation, transformation, and upgrading in their development strategies.
In fact, the scientific and technological innovation we feel from enterprises on a daily basis is basically focused on how to improve production efficiency or service efficiency, how to develop new markets or tap new demand, and even how to cut consumer leeks or shareholder leeks more elegantly. In other words, this type of technological innovation is expected to see commercial results as soon as possible. Even if today's market is hot: chips, integrated circuits, lithography machines, electric vehicles, new energy, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, metaversity, etc., in the introduction of related projects, profit forecasts, valuation models, inputs and outputs still occupy the core space.
Admittedly, there is nothing wrong with this. For enterprises, survival and development and shareholder returns are the fundamental mission. Enterprises take the initiative to carry out scientific and technological innovation, which is a great good thing, and it is difficult for strong people to participate in the "do not seek returns" thing, which is definitely too demanding. However, for a small number of industrial giants and investors who have accumulated huge amounts of capital and resources, we still expect them to "take one more step" on the road of scientific and technological innovation, but also "two more steps".
Feats like Hubble Weber's are typical of "two more steps." Weber, who has decades of painstaking efforts and tens of billions of dollars of investment, has studded to four times the distance of the moon in outer space, and the power can only be used for ten years, without the concept of input and output, without the concept of value preservation and appreciation, without a recycling plan, or even a maintenance plan. The cosmic information sent back has almost no current commercial value. This is really a guaranteed and unprofitable transaction.
Weber is 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, and its communication waves also need to fly for 5 seconds. If something goes wrong, it's impossible to send someone to repair it. Plus, if NASA can't develop "refueling" technology within 10 years, Weber will be down.
At present, there are more than 140 Fortune Global 500 companies in China, nearly 100 listed companies have more than 10 billion profits, and hundreds of listed companies have more than 10 billion cash reserves or cash flows. The profitability of these enterprises in the main business area is very strong, and under normal circumstances, their earning speed is higher than the speed of spending money.
Even a new generation of companies, which are blessed by new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, may maintain strong development and profitability under the condition of extremely low investment in traditional production factors (labor, land, capital), and it has become a consensus of action for this group of the most outstanding Chinese enterprises to actively assume social responsibility.
Among the various ways to assume social responsibility, bravely and decisively "taking two more steps" into the field of major science and technology innovation can not only share the worries of public finances, but also a particularly tasteful way, and even the best way to hope for fame and fortune.
Typical examples of "two more steps" are Iron Man Musk and Google. For example, Google, in addition to its main businesses such as search engines and online videos, also uses its affiliates to carry out the layout of a number of advanced fields such as human aging, major diseases, intelligent agriculture, artificial intelligence, and robotics. These companies and their products, with large inputs and slow outputs, are difficult to support financial performance in a short period of time. However, these companies are also orphans in related fields, and if they are not successful, they will not be able to succeed, and they will contribute to the improvement of human well-being.
Like the public familiar, DeepMind, which once beat the world champion of Go, is acquired by Google and continues to support. Last year, DeepMind used AI to predict protein structure, which has reached the world's leading level, has a profound impact on the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries, and has great commercial potential.
Of course, this is not to say that no one in Chinese companies is willing to "take two more steps". In addition to projects such as Hubble Weber, Sky Survey, and Controlled Nuclear Fusion, there are also many "two-step more" directions in the field of scientific innovation that we can see, such as planetary exploration, microscopic particles, life sciences, rare diseases, the demystification of the Earth's forbidden areas, and frontier topics in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
Due to inputs and outputs, global progress has been uneven, and even public finances are difficult to cover. These are not only the peak of science and technology innovation that the mountains look up to, but also the major opportunities for meritorious achievements in the thousands of years, leaving a vast space for a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs and investors who have the ability and ambition.
About author:Yi Yangchun, partner of Hejun Capital, venture capitalist, science fiction fan of science and technology fans, and lecturer of "Global Science and Technology Innovation Talk" of Hejun Business School.