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We built it.

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We stuck it on a rocket.

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It made it to space.

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It opened up robotically.

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And it's been giving us
views from the first hundreds

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of millions of years
after the big bang.

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So, if you think about it,
since the beginning of time,

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every fairy tale,
every myth, every story

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that humans have been telling
or yearning to learn about

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is the story of origin.

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We've come from somewhere.

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There's some process
that has led us here,

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and it has implications for
where we're going to go.

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And so we're, we're
going further and further

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into the past over time.

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Now we can see galaxies,
and we can observe them,

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and we can actually
analyze them.

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And that frontier has been
pushed forward exclusively

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by Webb.

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My research kind of was spurred
by a surprise, really inspired

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by a very early result of JWST.

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There was this time
period where we were like,

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we are finding galaxies
that are so massive.

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So it's kind of
like, you know, you

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go look for baby
pictures of your kids

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and you find, you know,
they're like 8 feet tall.

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It's like, what the heck?

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What's going on here?

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As more data comes in and
we revise our understanding,

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Webb hasn't changed anything
in terms of our understanding

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of cosmology.

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In the very base level.

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Our [INAUDIBLE] of
cosmology still holds.

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One of the things that's
been the most exciting

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so far has been the discovery
of a lot of massive black holes

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in galaxies in the
early universe.

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And it's exciting because we
weren't quite expecting that.

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We see a lot of objects
that contain black holes.

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And, in some cases, these may,
may be bigger than we thought.

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What can make black
holes that big so fast?

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Also, how can you make a black
hole that is so much more-- so

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massive compared to the galaxy?

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There's just a higher abundance
of very massive black holes

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in the early universe.

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And so, one thing that
happened with this Webb data

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is this flurry of scientists
working on galaxies,

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and scientists working
on black holes,

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and coming together to try to
understand what exactly we're

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seeing.

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We found a bunch of objects
that are incredibly difficult

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to explain, that there's a lot
of controversy over, these,

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like, 'little red dots.'

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We called them little red dots
because we're very creative.

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They looked exactly like
little red dots in the images.

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They're so compact, but there's
so much light coming from them.

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In the early universe,
there's only so much time

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to build up exorbitant
amounts of stellar mass.

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How is that physics happening?

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We are made of things like
carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,

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and other elements, but the
big bang made none of it.

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So, you want to find the stars
that made the elements that

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ultimately made us.

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So, it's, it's part of
completing the picture.

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It is a sea change.

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It is a sea change.

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It is-- there's no question JWST
has offered a complete change

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to the way that we think
about the first billion

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years of the universe.

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There's a sense of
wonder that astronomy

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inspires, regardless of whether
or not you are a scientist.

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And James Webb, I think,
has had a huge part

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in bringing that sense
of awe to everybody.

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This is just the beginning, and
Webb is just getting started.

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