Jiupai News Special Commentator Zhou Jie
A photo at the end of the universe and the big price behind it have become the scientific hot news of these two days.
According to reports, on the 11th local time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released the first full-color photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This image of the galaxy cluster in the Southern Hemisphere Trapeze is the deepest and most detailed infrared view of the universe ever obtained by humans. Some inconspicuous small spots on the picture, the light emitted has been shining for more than 13 billion years. The universe is only 13.8 billion years old, human beings use the James Webb space telescope, the field of vision has actually extended to the limit of time and space in the universe, there is a feeling that Sun Wukong flipped to the end of the sky.
Observing the same target, compared with its predecessor, the famous Hubble Space Telescope, the blurry picture that Hubble used to spend several weeks accumulating exposure, now Weber only needs more than ten hours to easily get it, and it is much clearer, which can be described as dozens of times more efficient.
But in order to double the efficiency, Webb's price is also hot enough - when it comes to Weber, everyone can't help but add that its research and development costs exceed $10 billion.
Source: Weber Space Telescope
【1】
"Spend tens of billions of dollars just to look at it more and see a little more in the universe, is it worth it?"
10 billion US dollars, about 67.2 billion yuan, what is the concept?
The Weber Space Telescope weighs 6161.4 kg, and at today's Chinese gold price of 456 yuan / gram, the same weight of pure gold telescope is only 2.8 billion yuan. Weber's 1 gram weighs the equivalent of 2.4 grams of gold.
More than 30 years ago, when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, the budget was only $200 million. That is to say, space telescopes from 1.0 to 2.0, dozens of times the efficiency of the increase to spend dozens of times more money. Really you get what you pay for, and the good goods are piled up with money.
Spend tens of billions, just to look at more in the universe, see a little clearly, is it worth it? Behind this question mark, there is actually another question about the direction of science: is it worth using visible money to do "big science" with invisible uses?
Hubble or Weber, the Chinese references are big scientific devices. Perhaps it should be said that the "big science" device is not the big "science device".
What is Big Science? Some people say that the "big science" is so big that the experimental equipment is huge, the theoretical concept is grand, the management system is huge, the degree of industrialization is huge, and the scope involved is vast. A few "big" and then synthesized, the core is actually a large budget, a large team.
【2】
"How do the large lenses of the house grind into a plane that undulates no more than a few tens of nanometers?"
Let's compare it with history. Hundreds of years ago, Galileo used two palm-sized glass lenses he had sharpened to see the crater of the moon clearly, which was science; Hundreds of years later, hundreds of scientists, divided into dozens or hundreds of research groups, worked together to complete an unprecedented telescope, which is big science.
Galileo hand-drawn moon map
Galileo expanded the human vision to 380,000 kilometers with his own strength and interest, which is probably the limit of the cost of scientific research that an individual can afford. If you want to see the deeper solar system, the wider Galaxy, and even the endless universe, you need bigger devices, more advanced equipment, lenses from palm size to house size, a thousand dollars, is not an individual can bear, so mainly rely on the country to invest heavily. In the words of Bush, the us secretary of science and technology during World War II, who wrote the famous "To the Endless Frontier" scientific development report and the US Secretary of Science and Technology during World War II, science is a professional problem, and big science is a "huge business operation and a huge engineering problem" that gathers the strength of many people and becomes a collective achievement. ”
Big science requires research that closely integrates science and technology. In the case of Weber alone, how do the large lenses of the house grind into a plane that undulates no more than a few tens of nanometers? How to divide into a honeycomb array, loaded into rockets, launched into space, and how to unfold with a high-precision error of half the length of the virus? And how to reduce the weight of space telescopes so that the weight is only 2% of the weight of the same telescope as the Earth? How to make a light and tear-free shading material? ......
Of course, these problems are the operational problems of the input-output ratio and the budget and final accounts, and they are also the engineering problems of production, education and research and cost performance. Solving these problems is not only a scientific progress, but also a major breakthrough in technology. This actually confirms the common phenomenon in the history of science and technology: great breakthroughs in science may rely on heroes and geniuses, but great breakthroughs in technology rely more on the state and money.
【3】
"In order to see the flowers at the end of the universe, everyone in the United States only needs to donate one gram of gold."
When the Hubble Space Telescope program was proposed that year, scientists shouted a slogan in order to win the US Congress to pass the budget (state support): everyone in the United States only needs to pay a movie ticket to watch space blockbusters for 15 consecutive years.
This sentence was put on the current Weber Space Telescope and had to be changed to: In order to see the flowers at the end of the universe, each person in the United States only needs to donate one gram of gold.
Movie tickets, gold or not, the two sister projects have passed smoothly, it seems that the iteration of the telescope, in fact, from science to big science, in line with the development of the times is inevitable. Big science is the science that fully embodies the will of the state, in which the state plays a pivotal role, and money plays a key role in it.
Behind Weber's over-budget and delayed time (Weber Telescope was delayed by 14 years than originally planned, and the budget was 20 times higher), it is also the state's investment regardless of cost and patience regardless of profit.
Back to the question just now, spend tens of billions of dollars to change the image of the universe from 2 million pixels to 20 million pixels, and the scientists engaged in this research, except for the chief scientist, are basically unknown and surname, is it worth it?
Many scientists saw Weber's first picture and silently praised one: value, commented: This 10 billion US dollars is really not spent in vain. This is the mainstream public opinion in the network science circle in these two days.
People who feel that it is not worth it see that it is spending money like water, and people who feel worth it understand the follow-up effect of a large project that hatches a bunch of cutting-edge technology.
【4】
"In the era of big science, there are fewer heroes, fewer geniuses, and scientists are more like 'a small cog in the collective operation'"
In the era of big science, there are fewer heroes, fewer geniuses, and scientists are more like "a small cog in the collective operation", and emotionally speaking, such a narrative is inevitably a bit lonely. However, from the perspective of the current situation, big science makes the scientific and technological competition between countries more rational and logical: scientific and technological competition is the continuation of economic competition and power competition, and the ratio between countries is input.
From this point of view, those who have more money are in front, and those who have less money are in the back. How to see, the Weber telescope worth tens of billions is like a scientific "Money Theory" written in space: there is no distance, no shadow. Blessed with money, auspicious and unfavorable.
Fermi experimented with neutrons and achieved the fission of atoms.
When Fermi retired from his presidency of the American Physical Society, he gave a speech on the theme of "I Have a Dream", in which he said solemnly but ironically that in the near future, we will build an accelerator in orbit around the earth to use the vacuum of space to find the secrets of the universe. What makes me even happier is that this space accelerator will cost $10 trillion, and the military expenses of the United States and the Soviet Union can fill this big hole. Aside from forging swords into plows and guns into accelerators, what other way can the world become sane?
Today, decades later, although the trillion-level and ten-trillion-level space accelerator is far away, the ambition of human beings to understand the universe has not changed, and the billion-level and ten-billion-level space telescope is at the right time. Seeing Hubble and Weber, big science can make the world sober, and Fermi's words made me feel close.
【Source: Jiupai News】
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