User reviews

This documentary spent over 1 hour talking about the things that could have gone wrong about the launch of the greatest and most complicated space research project ever. Such shame. JWST is the most amazing and complex piece of engineering we ever produced and successfully launched into space. Yes, lots of things could have gone wrong, but they didn't. Unknown: The Cosmic Time Machine won't spend any time highlighting the astonishing, breakthrough technology and science that went into the making of JWST. You won't learn much about the stunning pictures it takes, why we needed it to begin with. Nothing is said about the main point of this project; how seeing the images from the beginning of time help us understand who we are, and perhaps, why we are here.

As "Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine" (2023 release; 64 min.) opens, it is "13.8 Billion Years Ago" as the voice-over reminds us that is when the Big Bang occurred. We then go to "December 25, 2021" and the countdown for the launch of the James Web Space Telescope is on... Just before takeoff, we go back i1990 when the Hubble Space Telescope launched. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this documentary does a great job explaining some of te background as to what it is the James Webb Space Telescope actually does which its predecessor didn't do. Much attention is given to the 344 "single-point failures" which the 10,000 men and women who worked on the Webb for several decades, must avoid, an almost Herculean challenge. The big pay-off comes in the last 10-15 minutes when we get the spectacular photos which the Webb is now collecting, along with a treasure-trove of related data. One of the photo's shows a galaxy "being born" 13.2 billion years ago (yes, not all that long after the big bang). It also made me think how planet Earth has been fundamentally ravaged with in just the last 250 years or so (since the Industrial Revolution). This does not bode well for the future of humankind...Meanwhile, enjoy this every entertaining AND educational documentary. Can be viewed by anyone from ages 7 to 77.

"Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine" started streaming on Netflix a few days ago. If you have any interest in space or in human explorations, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Why do women always begin something by saying 'when I was a little girl.....'? Or something about "me"? The personal stories of people involved in James webb are irrelevant. Maybe a few seconds would be enough, and not tens of minutes. The James Webb project was the reason to watch the show. While the telescope did end up extremely exciting and it's changing our views about the age of the universe and possibly the Big Bang theory, the show is quite boring and slow. While the woman scientist (or engineer?) was focused on herself and her emotions and experiences on the projects, the guys talked mostly about the project.

So much potential here. They could have used this documentary as an opportunity to educate the public about the amazing science behind JWST, instead they focused most of the documentary on forced drama as if it were another brainless reality TV show. Topics they could have covered to better illustrate and educate the magic:

What is red shifting and tangible explanations on why the JWST is needed over the Hubble.

The groundbreaking use of beryllium for the mirrors and why the element was selected for its unusual properties at cryogenic temperatures.

The cryo coolers and how their novel design allows it to cool the instruments down to near absolute zero.

The damaged mirror and how the JWST is able to overcome it.

The unusual approach of physically deforming the mirror to focus the image.

Etc etc.... Could have been great but instead they took a story about one of the greatest scientific achievements in human history and chose to dumb it down to nearly worthless drivel.

This isn't about the wonderful discoveries that JWST have delivered but instead the brilliant scientists and engineers who delivered the JWST. Stories of unsung heroes, many of whom have dedicated over 30 years of their lives to pull off the near impossible. In a world that is ever increasing reliant on technology but equally contaminated by people who disrespect expertise, this is a much needed reminder that we owe a great debt to people who not only know their stuff but who also put in the hard, gruelling yards to deliver. If you want to explore what JWST has done for cosmology, I thoroughly recommend Brian Greene's recent World Science Festival interviews.

"Light in A Dark Time", a quote from a female astrophysicist on the show, is the best way to describe the James Webb telescope. The short documentary is definitely worth watching as it showcases the difficulty in designing, leading, getting funding, the disappointments and all hurdles that had to be overcome to be able to have the very risky and near impossible successful launch. Now that it is launched, humanity can see back in time 13 1/2 billion years ago, and the first image shared showed a massive amount of galaxies that old. I didn't give it a 10 star rating because quite honestly, if you are not an astrophysicist, and just a normal average citizen, it is extremely hard to wrap your mind around it (the shear time and distance of it) and hard to actually understand how truly awesome it is. Even by the awe on the astrophysicist's faces who do understand the meaning the Time Machine concept and distance, it is so amazing for them to comprehend it all as well at first look. Am sure it is just a first look at what is to come with more discoveries as scientists study the images.

This was the first of the Unknown documentaries that I watched. I chose this one as first because the subject is what interested me the most. We all are curious about the origins, about how everything started. Most likely questions that will never been answered, maybe partially, and that will be because of the James Webb telescope, an unbelievable human achievement. The documentary is well made, consisting of interviews of several people that were involved in launching the telescope. I get it that people that worked on this project for decades are getting emotional. The huge amount of money, the time spent, everything that could go wrong, it's all very stressful for those people. I would have liked more of those stunning space images. The ones they showed I've already seen them before, like most people I guess, so it would have been nice to show us some more images that were never released before. But other than that the documentary is informative and that's what its all about. A good watch if you're interested in space.

What an inspiration to us all the accomplishment that can be made when everyone has one goal! The pictures are absolutely beautiful and the thought and visuals of what is really out there is amazing. Without us seeing behind the scenes and all the work that went into it we would just take it for granted. Thank goodness for this film for showing us all what we really don't know behind the scenes. We just get to see the pictures from online but this film was detailed in showing us the hardworking people and the nervousness that goes into everything before the rest of us gets to see it.

There was only one character/astrophysicist that was really. Too much gibberish for me I fast forward her parts. I want to know the educational and the story and people behind the scenes.

"Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine"

In this movie, you will see the hard work and the process of how amazing the James Webb telescope was built. It also tells you that it had 344 single point failures, which means if you encounter any of the single point failures, you're gonna lose the mission. It seems impossibly difficult to do such great work, with so much possibility of failure.

Jane's Webb telescope was an old mission, which was initiated when the Hubble Space telescope was pointed for many days at an empty point in space. And what turns out to be after that, was truly amazing and spectacular. Afterwards, Hubble took many images of distant galaxies and stars and other constellations.

So they decided to make James Webb, which also got some criticism later on. Also it had to have a high budget, of billions of dollars, to make it happen.

After all, it was launched in 2021, and it deployed very well in space, where it was placed at L2 point, L2 point has a balance of earth's and sun's gravitational force. And this point is around one million miles from earth, which equals more than 1.5 million kilometres.

I love the fact that how easily we can see back in time and how far we can see back in time, this is awesome man.

The farther you look, the farther you look back in time, because light takes time to travel through space.

In over an hour there's barely 5 mins of actual content that directly relate to the Webb telescope itself.

There is so so much of unnecessary nonsensical fillers it's just ridiculous!

Unknown alright. Viewers still know almost next to nothing about the Webb telescope, nothing more than a cutesy science phamlet for 8 yr olds at the school exhibition.

Even solo contributors have put out much much better YouTube content about the Webb telescope.

Scenes of people jogging, family photos, nobodies (to the viewers) talking about their 'feelings'??? Huh????

Giving it 2/10 makes me 'feel' so so generous. 🙄

Promising start but mid way in the doumentary took a turn away from the telescope to take a 15 minute ego trip about one guy out of the ~1,000 people who conceptualized, designed, engineered, built, launched, executed deployment, maintain, and analyze data. It was absurd and interrupted the entire flow of the documentary. The guy was ego tripping so hard, they had him talking about his workout routine and how many miles he runs.

Unwatchable at that point. Imagine reading a literary masterpiece and the author stops the storyline to brag about themselves, writing process, life experiences, etc.

A waste of time, in the end you learn almost nothing about the telescope. Unfortunately it focuses too much about 3 or 4 people that were on the project (talking about their feelings, showing reaction videos, watching their families... why??) and leaves out really important information.

There are so many things left unanswered, there is lack of information, too much politics...

Is this how documentaries are nowadays? I guess reading about it in Wikipedia could be more interesting.

And please, next time bring someone who can actually speak not as annoyingly as the narrators of this documentary.

What a waste, I thought this was going to be about the making, launch and operation of JWST. Instead it's just a over hyped ego trip for some very dumb people who no one cares about...the boss of the operation is the biggest t**t I've seen on TV in a while, really does rate himself. This should have been about the science and the telescope not the people and their amazing egos, they all burned through billions of dollars that could have been used to help actual humans on earth instead of looking at distance galaxies that doesn't really effect anyone, seems like such a waste of money really, how do they get away with it?

The female voice of this documentary is the one most annoying sound I have ever heard in 30 years. I was incredibly interested in the subject and wanted to know more but I could NOT listen to that monotone valley girl voice for even a minute nor I could understand how could anyone find this acceptable as a documentary. She desperately needs classes on emphasis and intonation. I mean what happened to Morgan Freeman and all those actually nice voices. I don't know who Amber is but speaking, reading is not her strong suit and I wish producers noticed that.

I have nothing else to say about this production because I was not able to watch it and I'm very salty about it because the subject is super interesting.

Half of it was interesting science and tech and beautiful imagery, the other half feelgoody blather about personal details and mini-bios of people involved.

The early development and various designs was glossed over by a guy petting his dog going through wrinkled papers on the dining-room table. Should have been more about why it uses infrared light and red-shifting of distant galaxies, why the Arianespace base in in south america. And so on.

The worst parts were the segments with the airheaded valley girl types on the phone screens jumping up and down saying "Ohmygod" "yay" etc. Gag me.........

If you want to listen to the stories of the worst types of people "working" on this telescope this is a documentary for you. Can fit all the useful and interesting information about the telescope in a 10min YouTube video.

Red headed white lady, the most cliche half hot nerd chick brings nothing.

The European dude complaining about fasteners not being tightened should of been sent up in the thing.horrible person, look him up if you want to be disgusted in humanity, nothing you can do about it, best to watch sausage dog videos instead.

Would have been nice if they sent a GoPro up with it.heavily Relies on artistic impressions instead of actual video. No the world isn't flat and yes we went to the moon.

Way too many references to god and miracles.

Humans built it.