Scientists have found the beginnings of a young universe that may offer insights into the beginnings of our own Milky Way.

Jeff Bennett talked recently with Miles O'Brien about why scientists are so excited by this discovery, one that has a little holiday sparkle of its own.

NASA's James Webb Telescope recently detected an image of a young galaxy that formed 600 million

years ago after the Big Bang. And that has a mass much like our own galaxy did at what you

might call its infant stage. Scientists have nicknamed it the Firefly Sparkle Galaxy because this

image of star clusters reminded them

of a swarm of lightning bugs on a warm summer night. And appropriate for tonight's conversation,

one British researcher said the image also reminded him of Christmas lights strung together,

with its ten densely packed star clusters embedded in an arc of stars.

Our science correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is here to deck our halls with these Christmas

lights in space. Miles, happy holidays. Always good to see you. So help us understand more about

this firefly sparkle galaxy and why it's so important. Well, Jeff, if you could imagine a baby picture of our own galaxy, the Milky Way,

this is probably what it would look like, according to scientists.

This is a galaxy that is about 600 million years after the Big Bang occurred,

about 5% of the time into the formation of the universe

compared to today. It has the equivalent of 10 million suns of mass, but that's considered

a low-mass galaxy in the grand scheme of things. It is filled with these globules of stars that are

forming 10 clusters in all. And the difference in light has a lot to do with the fact that they're

happening at different times. The light temperature changes, depending on where you see it,

in time. And so what it is telling scientists

is an awful lot about the early formation of things like the Milky Way galaxy in ways we have

never seen before. The James Webb Telescope has the ability to see much farther and further than we could have imagined with other

...