Cosmic Dawn with Nobel Laureate John Mather

01You're listening to NASA's Curious Universe.

02I'm your host, Patti Boyd.

03NASA is doing something astronomers dreamed about for decades.

04The James Webb Space Telescope is peering into our universe's early past, at some of the very first stars and galaxies to ever form, and the first light after the Big Bang, Cosmic Dawn.

05Cosmic Dawn is also the title of a brand-new NASA documentary.

06It covers the untold story of the Webb Telescope's design, construction, and launch.

07You're in for a treat.

08You get to peek inside NASA cleanrooms, beryllium mines, and even weather a hurricane.

09There are a lot of twists and turns.

10And ahead of the big premiere, I wanted to talk to someone who knows the Webb Telescope better than just about anyone, because he was one of the people who first dreamed it up.

11John Mather is a senior astrophysicist at NASA.

12He's always been a bit of a science celebrity here, and that was even before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006.

13I've known John for decades, and it was so much fun to sit down and ask him about his life, his research, and what it really feels like to win a Nobel Prize.

14John Mather, welcome to Curious Universe.

15Thank you, Patty.

16It's great to be here with you.

17I'm delighted that you're here.

18It's the first time we've seen each other in a while since the James Webb Space Telescope launched.

19So first of all, congratulations on what an amazingly successful...

20It's a wonderful, wonderful observatory, and it's working beautifully.

21So we referenced Cosmic Dawn just a moment ago.

22What is Cosmic Dawn?

23The Cosmic Dawn is the beginning of things turning on after the Big Bang.

24So we didn't know until now how that started, but the Big Bang gave us an expanded universe, but didn't have stars and galaxies in it yet.

25That was 13.8 billion years ago.

26So time passed, and something happened, and stars turned up, and black holes.

27And we'd like to know what that was about.

28We call it the Cosmic Dawn.

29It's the first lights in the universe.

30So let me take you back a little bit to a different kind of Cosmic Dawn, a different beginning.

31Your origin story.

32So you grew up in a rural part of New Jersey, right?

33Yes.

34Do you remember like a certain moment in your childhood when your curiosity about the universe was first ignited?

35It's hard to remember accurately that far back.

36I didn't have a bad notebook to write in when I was six.

37But I do remember when I was about six, my dad told me at bedtime, you know, you're made out of cells, and there are chromosomes inside, and they control your future in some way, and you don't know how.

38And I thought, that's really interesting.

39But I did not end up becoming a biologist.

40Right.

41Then by the time I was eight, I was already aware of astronomy.

42We'd been to see the Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Planetarium show, and they showed the planets going around on the ceiling, and there was this giant meteorite that sits just outside the door of the planetarium.

43I thought, this is pretty exciting.

44Did you have a telescope?

45Eventually, I did.

46In high school, I finally got my allowance together, and I bought a mirror from Edmund Scientific, and it was that big around.

47And I bought some lenses, and I made some eyepieces with cardboard and tubes and things, and I made my telescope, so I could see through it.

48Amazing.

49I still have it.

50That's amazing.

51So were you ever thinking that moment, as you were building this first telescope, that someday I'm going to build the most amazing telescope that will launch a million miles away from Earth?

52No, that was long before the space age.

53Yeah.

54So no, there was no hint of that.

55So let me just pop in for a second here and explain how John Mather and his groundbreaking research became a big deal.

56While John was beginning his career in the 1960s, scientists made a remarkable discovery.

57We refer to it as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

58This radiation is actually a faint afterglow left over from the Big Bang, and it could hold clues to understanding where the universe and all of us come from.

59Eventually, John led a mission to measure and study that radiation from space.

60NASA launched a spacecraft called Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE for short.

61John led COBE's entire life cycle, conceptualizing the mission and leading the team who pioneered some really elegant scientific techniques.

62This work with COBE is what earned him a Nobel Prize.

63I was at a meeting of astronomers in 1990 when John shared the very first findings from COBE.

64And this might sound crazy, but that presentation was absolutely electric.

65I was a graduate student, and I was so excited to see the first results from COBE.

66And what I didn't realize was that virtually everybody else at the meeting was as excited as I was.

67In fact, it was a packed house, standing room only.

68I'm telling you, it felt like a rock concert.

69And as soon as John showed the early results from COBE on an overhead projector, we all jumped to our feet and gave him a standing ovation.

70Because what he was showing us was the clearest picture yet of the early evolution of our universe, and it was just a taste of things to come.

71Anyway, long before he started developing the James Webb Space Telescope, John made a name for himself by revolutionizing what we know about some of the universe's earliest moments, shortly after what we call the Big Bang.

72When did you first hear about the Big Bang?

73Ah, well, I had a summer school in physics after my junior year in high school.

74I went up to Cornell.

75By the time I got to college, you know, the people had discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965.

76I didn't know how much it was going to turn out to be a big deal for us.

77Yeah.

78At first, you know, okay, it exists.

79You have no idea that you're going to get so much information out of it that we eventually got from the COBE satellite and the others that followed.

80Yeah.

81So that, to me, is the biggest surprise of that work.

82Not that the Big Bang happened.

83Why wouldn't it?

84Yeah.

85But how could we find out so much, which we have?

86Right.

87So you learn about the cosmic microwave background radiation being measured in the 60s.

88How do you go from that to leading a project to launch a telescope to learn more?

89Well, that's a long story.

90But NASA says we want proposals for new science missions.

91It's just, what, 1969, we landed on the moon.

92This is five years later, I guess.

93Oh, wow.

94Golden age.

95So, okay.

96So, okay.

97Anybody got any ideas?

98Okay, boss.

99My thesis project failed, but we should try it in outer space.

100And he knew it was a good idea.

101He was already familiar with the reasons why it would be a good idea.

102So what NASA did was, they said, that's interesting.

103Well, here's a little money to go a little farther.

104And we made an idea.

105Yeah.

106And that's what we eventually built.

107Built it.

108Launched it.

109Built it.

110Operated it.

111Operated it.

112Got an amazing result.

113And within weeks of the launch, we knew the expanding universe story that everybody calls the Big Bang was correct.

114Because there's a thing called the spectrum, which says, how bright is this radiation at every wavelength?

115And it is exactly as it was supposed to be if it's really the remnant of that early moment.

116Right.

117And so, got a standing ovation for that.

118I was there, John.

119You were there.

120Yes.

121I don't know if I've ever told you that.

122Thousands of people were there.

123And I thought, you know, my perspective was warped.

124I thought, it's Saturday.

125Nobody's coming.

126But everybody came.

127It was jammed.

128It was jammed.

129Yes.

130It was standing room only.

131Yeah.

132I think we all knew it was never going to be like that in our career again.

133We're not going to have a moment like that where everybody just has this simultaneously sort of joyful recognition of what's happening here with this data.

134But what was it like for you?

135Like the first time you saw that curve that you just described, what was the moment like when you were seeing it?

136What actually happened is I remember it is the people that worked on the calibration process on the software called me up one morning.

137You've got to see this.

138So they had a graph.

139And they, oh, you've got to see this.

140Okay.

141Okay.

142Oh, this is exactly what I thought it would be.

143Wow.

144Um, and I hope we get to, to announce this real soon.

145Mm-hmm.

146And such an important result as time goes on that it ends up being the Nobel prize winning work.

147Well, yes, it does.

148Although that's only part of it because was a second, even more significant result that we got from the other instrument on, on the mission.

149We made a map to see if this radiation is equally bright in every direction.

150Right.

151And it should be if it's really cosmic and it should be a little bit different in over there than over here because we're moving relative to the rest of the universe.

152Mm-hmm.

153And that's true.

154And that sort of matches up with what we thought.

155And then the big question is, does it have spots in it?

156Mm-hmm.

157Is it spotty?

158Is the Big Bangs non-uniform or totally smooth?

159And this was the first real proof that it was spotty.

160So other people had been working on it and there was evidence measured from the ground.

161Other people had claims, but it wasn't such a big deal.

162We made a map of the entire sky.

163Mm-hmm.

164So you couldn't miss that.

165That pattern was there.

166So not only did you know it was spotty, but you knew where the spots were.

167We knew where the spots were.

168Mm-hmm.

169And so Stephen Hawking saw that map.

170He said, that's the most important scientific discovery of the century.

171Wow.

172If not of all time.

173Mm.

174And it didn't fully appreciate right away why he thought it was so important.

175Mm.

176But I think what he meant was the early universe was not the same everywhere.

177So it means gravity could pull back some of the expanding material and pull it back together to make galaxies.

178So we're here because the early universe has spots.

179And then, of course, there's the big puzzle of what made the spots.

180Mm-hmm.

181And we have no idea.

182Mm-hmm.

183Some year, we might have a reason why those spots are there.

184Mm-hmm.

185Maybe it'll be quantum gravity.

186Maybe it'll be some other story.

187Right now, we don't know why they're there.

188This is a long time ago now, 2006, the day that you found out that you won the Nobel Prize.

189Can you tell us what that moment was like?

190Yeah, the way it happens is you get a phone call at a quarter of six in the morning in the Eastern time zone.

191Mm-hmm.

192Were you told to be on the lookout for a call?

193Or?

194I had been given some hint that this might be our year.

195Mm-hmm.

196So anyway, the phone call does come, and I'm lying in bed.

197I'm awake.

198So that happens.

199You talk to the people in Sweden for a little while.

200Yeah.

201And then they say, can we put the journalist on?

202You do that for a little while.

203Mm-hmm.

204And you hang up.

205And then the second you do that, the phone rings again.

206Yeah.

207Yeah.

208And again, and again.

209And they talk.

210And after a little while, you realize you're never getting any breakfast.

211Uh-huh.

212You're stealing your pajamas.

213You're not going anywhere if you keep talking to these people.

214Uh-huh.

215Yeah.

216Yeah.

217And go about your day.

218Mm-hmm.

219But within an hour, there were journalists at my door.

220Wow.

221And my neighbors had balloons up.

222Oh.

223Yeah.

224So it was wonderful.

225Yeah.

226And how long is it between when you get the phone call and when you go accept the prize?

227Well, I guess it was October when we got the phone call.

228Mm-hmm.

229And the ceremony is on December 10th.

230Oh.

231So when you go to Stockholm, it's a totally overwhelming experience.

232I bet.

233And you don't just get off the airplane.

234You're met by diplomats and whisked away on a car to a special waiting room in which there is a stack of chocolate Nobel medals that I...

235And before you can walk into the hotel, there are autograph seekers everywhere.

236Oh, my God.

237I don't want to do this.

238I want to go to the bathroom.

239So anyway, you deal with that and then you fall asleep as soon as you can.

240And it's a very, very overwhelming experience.

241I can't tell you how it makes my little heart go pitter-patter even now to even remember that.

242And what an amazing day.

243Yeah.

244So I think we all felt we're family.

245We did this together.

246Mm-hmm.

247And we're proud of ourselves because we did it together.

248So you've got all this amazing information now.

249You know, building up on Kobe.

250How did you go from, say, Kobe and the Nobel Prize in Stockholm?

251Like a great accomplishment.

252Maybe a lot of people would be like, ah, all done.

253But no, you weren't all done.

254You moved on to a next amazing thing, right?

255Actually, what happened was I was thinking, well, we're never going to do anything as cool as that again.

256And I got a phone message from Ed Weiler at NASA headquarters.

257Mm-hmm.

258We're going to start a study of the new telescope that will follow after Hubble.

259Okay.

260Okay.

261And by the way, if you want to do this, I need a proposal tomorrow.

262Oh, boy.

263I started meeting with engineers and other scientists to say, well, what is it we need to build and why should we build it that way?

264Mm-hmm.

265And so that was in 95.

266Oh, boy.

267We started in on that.

268So it was even before the Nobel Prize came.

269So how did you know, like, what would be the telescope after Hubble?

270What was the next big innovation?

271And how did that idea come about?

272Well, people had been thinking about this for, like, 20 years, even before I got to it.

273Mm-hmm.

274So they knew what the next opportunity would be.

275What can you do in space that you can't do any other way?

276And so it turned out to be infrared astronomy.

277Mm-hmm.

278So why can't you do it from the ground?

279Well, the telescope on the ground glows with its own infrared radiation.

280Mm-hmm.

281The atmosphere glows, and it's also opaque in many wavelengths.

282So you just can't do it any other way.

283You have to build a telescope if you want to make any progress.

284Right.

285And what could you see if you could build it?

286Number one, you could see much farther back in time to the very first galaxies.

287Mm-hmm.

288You could see inside clouds of dust and gas where stars are being born because dust clouds are more transparent for infrared wavelengths.

289Mm-hmm.

290And number three, you can see things that aren't even warm enough to light up and to sign with their visible wavelengths.

291So, okay, so this is the great new opportunity, and we knew right away what we had to do and why we had to do it.

292Mm-hmm.

293And it turns out, as you know, it would be extremely hard to do it.

294Right.

295The documentary is an amazing story, you know, very emotional.

296And there are a lot of moments in there where things looked hard, right?

297Things looked like maybe too hard.

298That must have been very stressful for your team.

299How do you as a leader navigate those struggles?

300How do you keep the team working together towards something when it gets tough?

301Well, I don't think I did anything very obvious about leadership about this, but my perspective has always been, we're going to do this.

302Mm-hmm.

303I always felt that our leadership above us had support, that they wanted us to finish.

304They wanted us to find a way.

305Mm-hmm.

306I never felt anybody above us wanted to stop us.

307So they'll find a way.

308Yeah.

309So we, on our technical level, we'll find a solution, and they'll find a way to make sure we can actually carry it out.

310So you always kept that, the shining knowledge that this had to go.

311If we wanted to do the science that we say we want to do, it's got to be through this pathway.

312Yeah.

313That's how I always felt.

314And I always felt confident of the support from our levels above.

315Right.

316There's a famous thing about persistence in patients.

317It's called the marshmallow test that they give to children.

318Oh.

319Cool.

320What's the marshmallow test?

321The marshmallow test is you promise a child that they can have this marshmallow, but if they can wait 10 minutes, they can have two.

322So the answer is, well, some kids will jump right away and take the one, and some will wait longer and take two.

323Mm-hmm.

324And I think the reason that some are patient is they trust the adults around them.

325Mm-hmm.

326It's not so much that some kids are impatient and some are patient.

327It's more like, what do they think the world is like around them?

328Right.

329That's very important.

330So I knew that we had a pretty good system.

331Mm-hmm.

332That our NASA organization is good enough to carry this off.

333I'm so happy for your team, John, for the project science team, for all the engineers and scientists that worked for their entire careers in some cases.

334Yes, many have.

335To make this idea into an amazing reality.

336And it's just so exciting to see all the results coming out in all these different areas.

337The first galaxies, exoplanet atmospheres.

338Congratulations once again to you and the whole team.

339Well, thank you.

340I think our team has earned lots of respect.

341And it's very much of a team project.

342Mm-hmm.

343People think it's my telescope.

344It's a team telescope.

345John Mather is a senior astrophysicist at NASA.

346You can experience the full behind-the-scenes story of the James Webb Space Telescope in the NASA documentary, Cosmic Dawn.

347Find the film starting June 11th at nasa.gov slash cosmic dawn.

348And it will also be streaming on NASA+, NASA's very own free on-demand streaming platform.

349Check it out at plus.nasa.gov.

350This is NASA's Curious Universe.

351This episode was produced by Christian Elliott and Jacob Pinter.

352Our executive producer is Katie Conantz.

353Christopher Kim is our show artist.

354Our theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida of System Sounds.

355If you like hearing stories from NASA scientists, engineers, and astronauts, let us know.

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