Webb Telescope May Soon Spot Universe's First Stars

Scientists are on the verge of seeing something no human has ever witnessed: the universe's very first stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day 2021, is now powerful enough to spot these ancient giants. Known as Population III stars, they formed when the universe was just a baby, made only of hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium because nothing else existed yet.

These stars earned the nickname "dinosaur stars" for good reason. Like their prehistoric namesakes, they were massive, ancient, and didn't last long. They lived fast and furious lives spanning just a few million years before exploding in brilliant supernovas.

But their short lives left an incredible legacy. During their time, these massive stars created heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, and iron through fusion in their cores. When they exploded, they scattered these ingredients across the universe, seeding the materials that would eventually form planets and make life possible.

Scientists have spent over a decade preparing for this moment. The Webb telescope isn't quite powerful enough on its own to see individual ancient stars, but nature provided a helping hand. Galaxy clusters act as natural magnifying glasses, bending space and light in a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted called gravitational lensing.

These cosmic magnifiers boost the telescope's power by thousands of times. Astronomers are now using them to peer deeper into space and further back in time than ever before.

Why This Inspires

Finding these first stars could unlock answers to some of the universe's biggest puzzles. Scientists recently discovered supermassive black holes that existed when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age, but nobody knows how they formed so quickly.

The answer likely lies with Population III stars. When these giants died, they left behind black holes that may have merged together over hundreds of millions of years. Spotting the original stars could finally explain how those ancient black holes came to be.

Even more exciting, the light from these first stars traveled through dark matter on its way to our telescopes. By studying that light, scientists hope to understand this mysterious invisible substance that fills the cosmos.

The fact that humans can observe relics from the very beginning of time, more than 13 billion years ago, is simply amazing. We're about to see the cosmic ancestors that made our existence possible.