Our First Online Webb-inar

PROFESSOR:  Welcome to our first online webinar to learn about and follow the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.  Let me start with a simple question: can anyone tell me what a light-year is?  Anyone?  Anyone?

James Webb Space Telescope

STUDENT 1:  That is simple.  A light year is like this one, when I’m taking only two credits instead of the usual six.

PROFESSOR:  Droll, Bueller, droll.  And also incorrect, although it might explain why you’re a senior enrolled in a sophomore physics class.

[muffled online laughter]

STUDENT 2:  A light-year is the distance light travels in one year.

PROFESSOR:  Correct, Miss Woods!  Harvard Law is going to welcome you!  Now, does anyone know how far that actually is?  Anyone?

STUDENT 3:  So, is it travelling only in the daytime when it’s light out?  Or do we have to count the nights, too?

[professorial sigh]

PROFESSOR:  It’s all the same in space, Haskell.  Light and dark don’t figure into the equation.

BUELLER:  Oh, yeah, I remember the equation now.  E equals…something, right?  E equals, like a square emcee at a dance or something?

MISS WELLS:  You’re thinking of E = MC², Einstein!  Nice try, but wrong…as usual!  The speed of light is faster than you on your way to your next day off!  It’s like a hundred-and-eighty-six thousand miles an hour, right Professor?

PROFESSOR:  Ah, not quite, Miss Wells, but you’re honing in on it.  The speed of light in a vacuum is actually 186,282 miles per second.  We call that C, which is the component Bueller referred to in that equation.

BUELLER:  C?  See, I knew I was right.  But what’s a vacuum cleaner got to do with it?

[pronounced professorial sigh]

PROFESSOR:  Not a vacuum cleaner, Bueller!  Space is a vacuum, and the James Webb Space Telescope is going to travel about a million miles from earth to record the light from the big bang.

STUDENT 4:  The what?  Somebody’s bangin’ some…oops, sorry, thought I was on mute.

PROFESSOR:  Let’s focus, Dudley, shall we?  Please!  In one year, light travels about six trillion miles from its source.  For context, the moon is about one light-second from us, and the sun is about eight light-minutes away.

BUELLER:  How many zeroes does six trillion have?

PROFESSOR:  That really doesn’t matter, Bueller.  The key thing here is that the Webb spacecraft is going to hurtle more than a million miles through our galaxy before setting up to observe the outer reaches of space.

DUDLEY:  So, how many light years will that take?

PROFESSOR:  Dudley, if one light-year is six trillion miles, how many do you think one million miles might be?

DUDLEY:  Jeez, I dunno.  Like, less?

PROFESSOR:  Fewer, Dudley, fewer!  Not less!

[confused silence]

BUELLER:  Okay, so you’re saying fewer and less are different things in space?

PROFESSOR:  Never mind!  The important thing is that when the Webb gets there, it will deploy its sunshield and open its mirrors.

STUDENT 5:  What SPF?

PROFESSOR:  What’s that, Miss Gilmore?

MISS GILMORE:  The sunshield.  How strong is it?

PROFESSOR:  Oh, my dear girl!  We’re not talking about sunscreen here!  The shield is a massive screen the size of a tennis court, made of lightweight material with special thermal properties, called Kapton.

BUELLER:  Who’s the captain?

PROFESSOR:  Not who, Bueller!  What!  The screen is made of Kapton.

HASKELL:  Does it keep the bugs out?

[faint cracking of professorial knuckles]

PROFESSOR:  It’s not that kind of screen, Haskell!  And there are no bugs in space.

BUELLER:  I still don’t know who the captain is.

PROFESSOR:  There is no captain!  The Webb is an unmanned craft.

DUDLEY:  It’s got no men aboard?

PROFESSOR:  Correct.

DUDLEY:  What about women?

PROFESSOR:  What?

MISS WELLS:  He’s being stupid, Professor.  He knows there are no women aboard.

DUDLEY:  It’s not stupid!  When I heard there were mirrors, I figured there’d be women!

[loud online hissing from female students]

PROFESSOR:  Please, everyone, could we all just focus?  This is an historic mission into deep space, designed to help humankind better understand where our universe came from.  The Webb is going very, very far back into our past.  It’s perhaps the most critical space mission we’ve ever witnessed.

BUELLER:  More important than the Enterprise?

PROFESSOR:  What?

Starship Enterprise

HASKELL:  He means the Starship Enterprise and Captain Kirk, Prof.  And Captain Picard, and those other guys.

[professorial, head-shaking whimper]

PROFESSOR:  What are you two talking about?

BUELLER:  Captains, man!  Those guys were true captains!  Not like this Captain Webb!  They weren’t looking back into history.  They boldly went where no man has gone before!

PROFESSOR:  There is no Captain Webb, you imbe…I’m sorry, I mean Bueller.  But there is a quiz on what we’ve learned today, which you all can download, complete, and return to me tomorrow.  Any questions?  Anyone?  Not you, Bueller!

MISS GILMORE:  Will the quiz count towards our final mark?

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2022}