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>>INTERVIEWER: For 26 years, the
Hubble Space Telescope’s

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continuing mission has captured
the attention of the world with

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its awe-inspiring images of
strange new worlds and exotic

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galaxies across the universe.
And Hubble has a new image, and

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here to show us the new image is
Dr. Ken Carpenter at NASA’s

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Goddard Space Flight Center,
thanks for joining us. >>KEN:

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Glad to be here, thanks for
having me. >>INTERVIEWER: So for

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more than a quarter century,
Hubble has inspired generations

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of people around the world with
its views of the universe. Can

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you show us this new Frontier
Field image? >>KEN: I’d be glad

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to. The explorations of the
original starship Enterprise and

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her successors have inspired
many of us at Goddard to

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actually go out there and
examine the real final frontier

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to find out what’s there in the
real universe. This image that

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you see here is centered on a
massive cluster of galaxies

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containing hundreds of galaxies
in the cluster and then behind

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it we see literally thousands of
other galaxies in the same

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field. And each of the galaxies
has maybe a hundred billion

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stars in it; each of those stars
has likely a system of planets

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around it. So there is a huge
number of possible abodes of

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life and maybe even new
civilizations. >>INTERVIEWER: So

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this image is literally taking
us back to the very edge of

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space and time. How is this
image helping us explore the

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final frontier? >>KEN: Well in
order to get this image and to

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look back as far as we are in
it, we are using a trick of

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sorts. Einstein’s theory of
relativity taught us that if

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light passes by a collection of
mass like this nearby foreground

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cluster of galaxies, it will
bend, and in fact it gets

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focused just like a big
magnifying glass. This makes the

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far-away galaxies look both
larger and brighter than they

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would without it. So using this
technique, we are able to use

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these foreground galaxies that
are 4 billion light-years away

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to give us bigger and brighter
images of galaxies that are near

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the edge of space and time more
than 13 billion light-years

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distant. >>INTERVIEWER: Now
science fiction like Star Trek

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has stretched our imaginations
for 50 years. The starship

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Enterprise and its successors
explored hundreds of new worlds.

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How does Hubble compare in
seeking out life and new

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civilizations? >>KEN: Well we’re
working on it, we haven’t found

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direct evidence for life yet,
but we’re making great progress

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on finding planets around other
stars and starting to

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characterize them. We started
off by looking at stellar

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nurseries, these areas of the
sky where there are intense

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concentrations of dust and gas
that are coming together forming

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stars and forming planetary
systems around them. So we’re

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actually looking at stars and
planetary systems in the process

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of formation. We’ve also been
able to look at atmospheres of

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planets around other stars by
observing the light coming from

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the parent star going through
the atmosphere of the star and

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looking at the intensity of the
starlight versus color. And

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doing that recently, we sent a
release out on Wednesday that

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showed two planets that are
devoid of light element

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atmospheres that might otherwise
smother it and therefore might

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be good candidates for having an
Earth-like atmosphere with

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oxygen in it. So we’re both
seeing planets around other

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stars with Hubble and other
telescopes, but we’re now also

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starting to characterize them.
And we continue the search for

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signatures of life itself both
with Hubble, we will with the

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Webb Telescope when it launches
in 2018, and the TESS telescope

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which actually launches sooner
in 2017 will actually find more

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planets, more targets for us to
look at. >>INTERVIEWER: Now Star

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Trek helped us imagine many
wonders out there in the final

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frontier. What are some of the
coolest things Hubble has seen?

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>>KEN: Oh we’ve seen so much,
it’s hard to pick, but for

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example, we’ve seen colliding
galaxies where two galaxies pass

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by each other, sometimes through
each other, and they make all

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these beautiful patterns and
arcs of life and kick off new

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epochs of star formation. We see
black holes shooting out

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tremendous jets of material at
really high speeds, hundreds of

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thousands of miles per hour,
shooting over incredible

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distances. And of course we’ve
looked deep into the universe,

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back toward the beginning of the
universe near the Big Bang in

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several directions in the sky
now. And one of the biggest

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mysteries, the most exciting
results to come out of this –

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Hubble along with other ground
and space observatories has

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confirmed that the expansion of
the universe is actually

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increasing with time, which is
something we didn’t expect. We

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expect it would slow down
because of gravity. So it’s as

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if you took a ball, threw it up
in the air, and instead of it

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slowing down and coming back to
you, it started to speed up. It

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makes no sense, we have no idea
what causes it. We call the

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cause “dark energy” but “dark”
just means we don’t understand

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it. So it’s a big puzzle. It’s
going to take a lot of work in

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the future to figure out what’s
actually doing it. Hubble’s

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working on it; we’re working on
some new telescopes; Webb will

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look at it; also there’s a
telescope in the mid 2020s

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called WFIRST that we intend to
launch to study dark energy in

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detail and maybe solve the
mystery of what’s causing the

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expansion of the universe to get
ever and ever faster.

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>>INTERVIEWER: Now how has
science fiction like Star Trek

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inspired you? >>KEN: It was
critical actually I think. Of

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course in the 60s there were the
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo

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programs to help inspire. I had
read science fiction in general

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which got me interested in the
field. But Star Trek is perhaps

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the single most important thing
in getting me to go into a

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scientific field. And in
particular I remember an episode

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where they gave the name of a
star, and I got curious about

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whether it was a real star of
whether they just made it up.

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And I went to the library,
picked up an astronomy book,

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confirmed it was a real star,
but in the process of course

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opened up an astronomy book and
saw some wondrous stuff in there

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and I was hooked. And I never
looked back from that date in

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the mid 60s and knew I wanted to
be an astronomer and was able to

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make the dream come true.
>>INTERVIEWER: And where can we

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see more of Hubble’s amazing
images? >>KEN: I would go first

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of all to the main Hubble
website, nasa.gov/hubble. You

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can also follow us on Twitter at
handle NASA_Hubble. And you’ll

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see a constant stream of new
material coming out of there and

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links to other resources as
well. Lots of information out

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there for your enjoyment.
>>INTERVIEWER: Great, thanks for

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joining us. >>KEN: Thank you.