At first, everyone thought Webb’s biggest discoveries would come from distant galaxies, the birthplaces of stars, the far reaches of the cosmos.
And yes, those discoveries are coming. But no one expected how much it would reveal about our backyard, our own solar system.
Jupiter isn’t what we thought. The asteroid belt isn’t what we thought. The Kuiper Belt, the icy worlds beyond Neptune, are full of surprises.
Webb has found storms and magnetic anomalies on Jupiter that shouldn’t exist. It has spotted gigantic plumes of water spewing from moons we once thought were frozen solid. It has found water in places that should have lost it billions of years ago.
And the thing is, these discoveries are just the beginning.