The Webb Space Telescope Is a Time Machine
The new observatory may have found the most ancient starlight we’ve ever seen—and it’s only the beginning.
The newly discovered galaxy looks a little bit like a squashed tomato, or maybe the crown of a cherry-flavored Ring Pop. Just a red blob, so blurry and edgeless that the first time I looked, I had to make sure I’d put my contact lenses in. I say these things because without invoking little earthly associations, I’m not sure how we’d even begin to fathom what this cosmic object is: not just a galaxy, but perhaps the most distant galaxy we have ever seen.
The galaxy was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, the newest and most powerful observatory in the world, which kicked off operations last week. The starlight that Webb spotted from this galaxy left its
