Evolution of Galaxies

Narration: Amber Straughn

Transcript:

That whole process of galaxies forming and evolving over 13 plus billion years, we’ve learn a lot about that but we’re really missing a key piece of that puzzle and that is how galaxies got their start. So that’s the piece we haven’t seen yet and that’s the James Webb Space Telescope will allow us to see for the very first time. So the first stars and galaxies are really a big mystery for us. We don’t know how that happened; we don’t know when it happened. We have a pretty good idea that they were very much larger than the sun and that they would burn out in a tremendous burst of glory in just a few million years, which is really very short. But they would also prepare the way for further generations of stars like the sun to be formed. So those first stars would produce the chemical elements of life like carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and iron and sulfur and calcium and all the things we’re made of, would have been produced in those first generations of stars that then explode and liberate their material back into space so the next generation of stars can form with planets with solid bodies and possibly have life.