This is an I-Hard podcast, guaranteed human.

The best moments in science are the surprises.

The reason we do experiments is because we want our intuition, our expectation to be confronted by reality.

That's why we build particle colliders and telescopes to force the universe to reveal its secrets to us.

And just about every time we commission a new telescope, every time we look out into the universe with new kinds of eyeballs,

we see something new, something surprising, something that confounds our expectations and clashes

with our understanding. Those are the best moments because they herald some new idea,

some new revelation, some new understanding of how the universe works,

something potentially groundbreaking about our cosmos.

So when we launched the James Webb Space Telescope, I was very excited for what it might

reveal, and we have not been disappointed.

Today we'll dig into one of the first, grandest, and long-standingest mysteries revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily surprising universe.

Music Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith.

I study parasites and space, and I have two telescopes, one of which I cannot figure out how to use, and one of which I can and I love it.

And what kind of things can you see through your telescope?

The moon and big stuff.

Through your neighbor's windows.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

You can't see any of my neighbor's windows from where I live. All right. I'm not creepy. I guess in Virginia, people respect their privacy. That's good to hear. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist from California, and I study particles and aliens. And I own zero telescopes. You own zero telescope. Well, I guess, you know,

in California, it can be hard to get away from the light pollution. But there's some parts of

California where you can get away from the light pollution, probably. It's easy for me here in

...