The James Webb Space Telescope spotted the most primitive galaxy ever seen. Immediately after the Big Bang, the only chemicals in the universe were the simplest: hydrogen and helium. Cosmologists believe that heavier, more complex atoms were made in the explosive death of huge, short-lived stars in the dawn of the universe.

The JWST was intended to confirm that theory. The LAP1-B galaxy — 13 billion light years away, tiny, and dim, meaning even the powerful JWST had to use nearer galaxies as a “gravitational lens” to magnify it — has barely any heavier elements. It is not the oldest known galaxy, but appears to be caught at the moment the universe began forging the ingredients that made everything else, including us.