I'm Alan Olva and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

I think what it conveys to you is how exciting it is.

We are literally figuring out how the universe began, how the universe will end.

In galaxies were born human beings that only a few thousand years ago were walking around.

I don't think we were going to universities or things like that.

We didn't have telescopes a few thousand years ago, but after a few thousand years we were

able to figure out how the universe began, what the laws are, that govern it, grappling

with ideas as big as the birth and destiny of the universe.

Boy, that's exhilarating.

This cosmologist Michael Turner, we last talked with him shortly before the James Webb space telescope

was launched 15 months ago.

Michael had thrown his considerable intellectual weight behind funding for the telescope

when his future was in doubt.

So we asked him back to find out of his belief and the importance of the Webb telescope

has been born out.

Are we really closer to understanding the beginning and end of it all?

I've really been wanting to talk to you ever since the Webb telescope has been out there

a million miles from us in space, peering at the distant past of the universe.

And I know you weren't on the team that put it there, but you were an enthusiastic supporter.

I remember reading an editorial of yours in 2011 when funding was uncertain and you

wrote a rousing piece that it would not just a telescope, it was an inspiration for young

people in a powerful symbol of US leadership and science and space.

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