Photographic Moment

Searching for Signs of Life Beyond Our Solar System

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is 100 times as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope, was launched in December 2021 and will start sending images back to Earth in July. A recent Demystifying Medicine lecture featured Nobel laureate John Mather—NASA senior astrophysicist and senior project scientist for the Webb—who spoke about how the telescope will search for signs of life beyond our solar system and provide clues on how the early universe evolved and gave rise to the first stars, galaxies, planets, and ultimately, life. Read more in the feature by Michael Tabasko.