Billions of years ago, long before a swirling cloud of gas and dust coalesced to form the sun, light left the earliest stars and began a long journey through space.
The light has been traveling ever since, covering trillions upon trillions of miles. It hurtled by galaxies and their nascent stars, some of which were accompanied by planets. And on one of these, a species evolved with the ability not only to question what might be out there, but to build tools to see what its own eyes could not.
On Monday, the world got its first glimpse of that ancient light courtesy of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most sophisticated and ambitious deep-space viewing tool yet assembled.
