#jwst

#jwst

Each time we've looked at the Universe in a fundamentally new way, we didn't just see more of what we already knew what was out there. In addition, those novel capabilities allowed the Universe to surprise us, breaking records, revolutionizing our view of what was out there, and teaching us information that we never could have learned without collecting that key data.

The Hubble Space Telescope displayed what the Universe looks like. Its successor, JWST, now reveals how the Universe grew up. Galaxies formed and grew massive swiftly: requiring under 300 million years. Larger-scale, more massive structures, like galaxy clusters, take longer. The earliest mature, fully-fledged cluster is CL J1001+0220. Simulations predict such clusters to appear late: after 2-3 billion years. However, proto-clusters, or still-forming galaxy clusters, appear far earlier.

In the animal kingdom, one of the most bizarre discoveries of all-time was the platypus. When reports of the platypus reached the western hemisphere, most leading naturalists at the time assumed it was a hoax, including the first European scientists to examine a specimen in 1799. It was an animal that laid eggs, yet it was a mammal. It had the bill of a duck, but the tail of a beaver.