A telescope has captivated me in the past few weeks. Not an ordinary telescope; but the "James Webb Space Telescope," which the American NASA, the European ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency CSA precisely launched into space with an Ariane 5 rocket on the second day of Christmas. While I am writing this column, Webb is drifting toward "Lagrange Point 2." The point is four times further from the Earth than the Moon. Once it arrives, it will drift with the Earth around the Sun for the next 10 or more years, observing the depths of the universe with unprecedented possibilities in the Earth's shadow. James Webb, of course, has its price: 10 billion US dollars. Immediately, I wondered: what drives nations to invest this enormous sum in a purely curiosity-driven fundamental project? So let's take a brief look at the project.
The technology on board alone is fascinating: on the back of a huge light-shielding shield, four super-sensitive spectrometers will measure light in the near to mid-infrared range. A 6m diameter gold-coated mirror telescope is made entirely of beryllium, whose low weight has minimized the payload and whose low thermal expansion coefficient guaranties the optical stability of the mirror. The installation must function in the cold of space under constant bombardment by solar wind and micrometeorites, which is guaranteed, among other things, by a 20m long shield. The huge device was packed into the nose of the rocket at a width of 4 meters and unfolded step by step on the way into space, controlled by hundreds of sensors. If just one of the 344 potential "points of failure" goes wrong, the entire mission could end up as space debris. Because a repair mission at a distance of 1.5 million km is impossible. But NASA has (so far, as of mid-January) mastered the unfolding of the telescope like a precise clockwork. Given the sometimes defect-prone analytical instruments in our earthly geochemistry lab, there's a bit of envy here.
Even more breathtaking are, of course, the scientific questions. Since the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the light from its birth is only now reaching us. Due to the expansion of the universe, the light has shifted into the infrared range, allowing it to penetrate cosmic dust and gas on its way to us. So we will be able to take a look at the universe a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang; long before our planetary system even existed. What questions do we expect answers to? It's about the formation of the first stars from the primordial soup of protons, when the first galaxies and black holes formed, and when the heavy elements came into play. The infrared cameras can capture much more detailed images of exoplanetary systems and cosmic dust clouds, their precursors, allowing us to verify our hypotheses on planet accretion – all questions we also raise in our lectures on element and planet formation. With the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) built in Europe, the mineralogical composition of the interiors of "shredded" exoplanets is to be measured, thus providing us with the composition of their core, mantle, and crust – data that we do not even know accurately for Earth.
A look at the public relations efforts of NASA [1] and ESA [2] is also worthwhile. With wonderful graphics and animations, we were able to witness the unfolding of the telescope "live." The complicated technology was explained in simple language and in fact sheets, making it easily accessible. The explanations of the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, or how light from the atmosphere of exoplanets reveals their chemical composition are like a crash course in science and technology that weeks of school lessons could not better provide. I would be surprised if many young people, thru this concentrated exposure to the most fundamental questions of our origins, did not find their way into the sciences.
This experience has certainly not only led me to the question: can we do this too? Can we, as mineralogists or geoscientists, envision such large, fascination-inducing research projects? Or are we too small? Is the Earth fully explored, so that no "Terra Incognita" remains? Is this too expensive? Do we not need such large, integrated projects in light of the specific nature of our topics and methods? OR do we, who research the Earth and with it our basis of life, not have the most colossal research object right in front of us? An object whose interior we barely know, and which is just waiting for impressive research efforts?
Yes, 10 billion dollars is a huge amount. But even here, public funding is gladly provided for larger investments in the geosciences, as long as they promise new insights, radiate fascination, and are convincingly justified. The MOSAiC Arctic Mission of the Polarstern cost 140 million EUR. The continental deep drilling program of the 1990s, the last major project in solid Earth geosciences, cost around 270 million euros. The German share of the planned new German-American GRACE-I gravity field satellites will be around 150 to 200 million euros, and the new Geo- and Environmental Center of the University of Tübingen cost 83 million euros. The geosciences already have a hugely expensive megaproject ahead of them: the search for and construction of a final repository for spent nuclear fuel. Cost factor: approx. 50 billion euros. Let's just assume for a moment that such funding opportunities exist; just as a thot exercise.
Which impossible megaproject would we "dream up"? An informal, small survey within the DMG community and other geo-disciplines spontaneously generated a lot of ideas: a deep drilling thru the entire oceanic crust to finally clarify its structure and composition? Or even several of them, to capture the spatial variability? A nanometer probe that, in addition to the chemical composition of the finest solids in rocks, soils, sediments, or biogenic particles, also determines their elemental speciation, charge density, structure, and perhaps even some isotopic ratios in large numbers? Two orders of magnitude better detection limits and precision of the next-generation mass spectrometers would provide us with unique opportunities, for example, for the detection of extinct nuclides or aquatic geochemistry. How about sample return missions not only from Mars but also from the asteroid belt, Venus, Mercury, and the moons of Jupiter for a completely new picture of the solar system and planet formation? Do we need computers that are orders of magnitude more powerful than today's supercomputers, possibly supported by artificial intelligence for the planned "Twin Earth" initiative, that is, the creation of a digital twin of the Earth? So far, this twin is primarily intended to simulate climate change, the oceans, the cryosphere and biosphere, and interactions with humans [3]. If the twin were expanded to encompass the entire Earth, it could be combined with intelligent algorithms and data from mineral physics, geochemistry, geodynamics, geophysics, etc., to create a realistic model of the Earth. Do we need a "Materials Genome Initiative" [4] to develop better and more resource-efficient materials for the energy transition or the healthcare system thru simulation, experimental, and data infrastructures? Beyond mineralogy and geochemistry: how about a dozen radar satellites that measure movements on Earth – as an early warning system, and to map tectonic strain and exogenous mass relocations in real time? At the land surface, couldn't a large number of automated "Critical Zone" observatories provide us in real-time with the impacts of global change on combined geo-, hydro-, and biosystems? If we want to conduct an inventory of all microbial life and its metabolic potential in all habitats on Earth, we should design a global meta-genome program. It becomes more complex if we also want to determine the activity and the ongoing metabolism of the found microbial communities using transcriptomics and proteomics. Microbially induced changes in the Earth system, such as methane release in the Arctic or soil formation in formerly arid areas, can be predicted in this way. And finally, could not the task of annually removing a dozen billion tons of climate-damaging excess CO2 from the atmosphere thru nature-based extraction methods and geological CO2 storage be the next mega-project in the geosciences?
Sure, many of these ideas are dreams and will remain so, some may not be feasible, and many others are missing. Two things, however, stand out. First of all, we obviously have neither a lack of ideas nor a need for inspiring visions. Secondly, almost all the projects mentioned here are integrative; that is, they can only be realized together with other geosciences or soil and environmental sciences, chemistry, IT disciplines, astronomy, or engineering. Let's add the potential for public outreach and the possibility of captivating a young generation with our disciplines – what is there to stop us from dreaming, or – even better – from daring to implement? We don't even have to travel to the beginning of the universe to fascinate with our disciplines, just like "James Webb," on, in, or near Earth. Let's take a moment to think big about our field.
Friedhelm von Blanckenburg
DMG Chairman
[2] www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb
[3] digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/destination-earth
[4] www.mgi.gov
[5] https://czo-archive.criticalzone.org/national/research/the-critical-zone-1national/; https://www.tereno.net
