Vancouver/CMEDIA: After years of attempts meeting with failures, Dr. Jeremy Heyl , a professor of physics and astronomy at University of British Columbia (UBC) reportedly gained access to the James Webb Space Telescope for research.
“We had applied for a bunch of different programs, maybe five or six different ones, and this was the only one that was successful,” Heyl was reported to say.
Since its launch in December 2021, researchers across North America and Europe have been competing to access the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Considered to be revolutionary, the $10 billion JWST can capture images of stars that are thousands of light-years away.
Heyl’s project involves searching for ancient planetary systems and observing stars and galaxies approximately 12,000 light-years away.
“So these stars (that are) like our sun are stars that were born right at the beginning of the universe – close to the beginning of the universe – so it would be really great to know if there were planets forming 10 billion years ago,” said Heyl. “Could there have been life in our galaxy like us but five billion years ago? Or more?”
Heyl is expecting to receive new images generated by the telescope in the near future and says his research is far from over.
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