cosmology

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is waiting at its launch site, after years of repeated delays and cost overruns. At one point, the giant new observatory was threatened with cancellation.

The upcoming launch of NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope should let astronomers see what some of the universe's first stars and galaxies looked like soon after the Big Bang.

To make enough of the elements to support the chemical complexity of biology, we need an enormously old universe. Stars truly are the factories of life. But for you or your cat to exist, several generations of stars need to have come and gone - each born from the atoms of previous generations, like the babies of the Orion Nebula.

To make enough of the elements to support the chemical complexity of biology, we need an enormously old universe. Stars truly are the factories of life. But for you or your cat to exist, several generations of stars need to have come and gone - each born from the atoms of previous generations, like the babies of the Orion Nebula.