The early universe had few elemental ingredients for making the molecular building blocks of planets, but the James Webb Space Telescope is showing massive, aging stars may have found a way.
Sextans A is a nearby, tiny galaxy that resembles those that filled the early universe just after the big bang—when the universe was made of mostly hydrogen and helium—before stars had time to enrich space with “metals.”
In this galaxy, though, Webb found iron dust and complex carbon molecules, even with very few heavy elements available. The discovery offers new insight into how the first galaxies developed the building blocks for planets: https://news.stsci.edu/4st0ccz
