Infrared astronomy - with Matthew Bothwell

Why does the universe look the way it does? The answer could lie in the massive, dusty, and star-producing galaxies that existed billions of years ago, and are invisible to the naked eye.

Matthew Bothwell is an astronomer and science communicator based at the Institute of Astronomy and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.Matthew recieved his PhD from the University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Rob Kennicutt and Dr. Scott Chapman. Before taking up science communication, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, and the Astrophysics group at the University of Cambridge.

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[PowerhouseCell]

This was explained really well for a general audience! Science communication is so important, and it's great how well it's done here :)

[penguinista]

This is a very exciting time to be an infrared astronomer, what with JWST releasing its first images TOMORROW!

[toni]

Thank you for the information. It makes a pleasant change to hear about what so far out there.

[simonm]

That looks fascinating, I just bought the book. Thank you!

[desertshadow]

The invisible universe book is a great read🤓👍

[freddyjosereginomontalvo]

Excellent channel with awesome content and great quality as always say 🌍💖

[spaceinyourface]

Fascinating stuff, , it was a shame it was over to quick, made me wantthe book, I'm just checking that it's available as audio.

[andycordy]

Hugely exciting! It seems like an odd time to publish a book on this subject just as JWST is about to commence full scale operations and we are promised that it will revolutionise our understanding of the early universe.

[Roulandus-le-Fartere]

Fascinating stuff. Anyone who tells you "the science is settled" on any topic isn't a scientist! Pity this video has 20 comments while some idiots on TikTok are getting millions of likes. I think we're doomed...

[ingoos]

Hi all.

Any jwst video capturing a new star yet?

Also, kindly comment / correct my understanding:

The age of the universe may NOT actually be 13 something billion years old or so. We assume that it is, due to the time that it takes light from the farthest galaxies.... We also assume that the speed of light has always been constant. iirc, from the big bang, space expanded & still continues to expand... —in fact, faster than the speed of light. Anything within expanding space will also be traveling at the same expansion rate (so faster than the speed of light, but at or less than the speed of light, relative to other stars & galaxies...)

The point: images to be gathered by the HST /JWST will only reveal what happened well AFTER what we are already seeing... and not anytime/anything BEFORE/in the past.

In other words, we cannot /will not see anything earlier than/beyond the past of what we are already seeing.

So, any object, even if it is N billion light-years away, is already well ahead of its creation /formation, and we will never see that—how it was forming /being created, because it's “first light“ has passed so long ago.

[surendranmk]

Up and down! Do you think that is a physical reality. Up and down, left and right, clock wise and anti clock wise. Is that all grossness of our sensations? What is magnetism and electric charge? Nobody have answer for it but explaining elementary particles ! Some important things are there which we really didn't understand yet. Parroting misconceptions makes no use!

[etherdog]

Is the purported age of the universe just the limit of how far light waves can elongate before they are unresolvable? With dark energy, what is now 13.8 light years away from our horizon is now, at this time, nearly 93 billion light years away.

[driedpancake]

How many levels of fraud are you on?
Astronomers: Hold my CMB

[EdwardHowton]

I was _going_ to make a tired joke about how within days there would be some charlantans selling junk to idiots under the banner of _Ultraviolet Astrology_ as a response to this video.

I googled the term.
I was _going_ to make a joke. Turns out it's not a joke. *Sigh.*

[charlestaylor]

Why didn't you show us an image, we didn't click on this to watch you talk.

[josemariodelapiedra]

Please talk a bit slow, not all your fans are native English speakers