6 game-changing discoveries the James Webb Space Telescope made in its first year include the earliest black hole, the birth of distant stars, and building blocks of life
"One of the great things about Webb is every time we see a new result we're all just sitting around the monitors going 'Wow.' I mean, it's really an amazing mission for me when I think about the fact that it can just get people you know, completely engaged every time you see a new result. You never get jaded," Clampin said.
To celebrate this technical feat, here are six of the discoveries that we here at Insider have found most exciting.
The birth of 50 distant stars. Some of them are suns powering protoplanetary discs that could one day form a solar system, light years from our own.
A supermassive black hole with the mass of 9 million suns that predates any scientists had ever discovered. It's so large and old that scientists grappled with a way to explain it.
An artists rendering of a large black hole and the cosmic dust surrounding it.
NASA Goddard
In a distant ring of rock, dust, and gas, scientists discovered a chemical called methyl cation for the first time. It's known as a molecular building block of life, and makes up most of the organic material on our planet.
Images from the James Webb Space Telescope show a part of the Orion Nebula where methyl cation was detected in a young star system, shown in the lower right segment.ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), PDRs4ALL ERS Team
The discovery of hundreds of new galaxies, many of which are from the very early universe.
Sand storms on a planet 235 trillion miles away. Scientists call the countless amounts of little sand particles a "treasure chest" for scientific discovery.
The spectrum Webb found on the planet VHS 1256 b, showing signatures of silicate clouds, water, methane, and carbon monoxide.NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI); Science: Brittany Miles (University of Arizona), Sasha Hinkley (University of Exeter), Beth Biller (University of Edinburgh), Andrew Skemer (University of California, Santa Cruz)
A new view of the pillars of creation shows in detail how star-speckled the dusty region is. Hubble had taken photos of this star-forming region before, which makes for an astonishing side-by-side view of scientific progress.
Hubble's 2014 image of the Pillars of Creation (left), versus Webb's 2022 snapshot of the same formation (right).NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
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Maiya Focht is a Science Fellow at Insider, covering all things STEM. She has a soft spot for writing stories about extremes — from animals living in the deepest parts of the sea to humans exploring deep space. She's also passionate about topics that affect life for us normal people on Earth, like water desalination, climate change, and green energy. From her background studying Neuroscience at Syracuse University, she got her start covering Health and Wellness at WAER 88.3, Syracuse's local NPR station. There, she covered hyperlocal topics like dietary supplements and telehealth in the early days of the pandemic. After, she earned her masters from NYU's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program while interning at WebMD, Medscape, and Scholastic.
