James Webb Space Telescope gives us the oldest ever look at the universe
On December 25, 2021, space enthusiasts around the world held their breath as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful space observatory ever built, launched from French Guiana. From orbit about a million miles from Earth, JWST has peered into the dawn of the universe (discovering new mysteries therein), glimpsed the skies of distant exoplanets, provided a fresh look at objects in our own solar backyard, and produced mesmerizing views of our cosmos. With 100 times the power of the Hubble Telescope, JWST is our sharpest eye on the universe—and it’s just getting started.
Thousands of planets discovered orbiting other stars
Though the first exoplanets were spotted in the 1990s, it wasn’t until the 2009 launch of NASA’s Kepler telescope that the age of exoplanetary discovery really got rolling. Over its nearly decade-long run, Kepler discovered over 2,600 exoplanets—an astonishing haul that confirmed, at last, that planets of all kinds are common around stars in our galaxy.
Since Kepler retired in 2018, a new generation of planet-hunting telescopes—including JWST and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)—have continued to shed light on the many tantalizing worlds beyond our solar system. We’ve discovered planets that rain metal, potentially habitable planets, and “rogue” planets that roam interstellar space. As of 2025, we’re at 6,000 confirmed exoplanet detections and counting.
We can now directly attribute weather disasters to climate change
Scientists have known for decades that humanity’s consumption of fossil fuels is causing global temperatures to rise, and therefore amplifying extreme weather events like heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires. But it wasn’t until 2004 that researchers specifically attributed the severity of a natural disaster to climate change the severity—in that case, the deadly 2003 heatwave in Europe.
This study marked the dawn of climate attribution, a field that isolates our own human contribution to Earth’s complex climatic and environment shifts. Since then, we’ve learned that climate change can raise the odds of a severe weather event, such as the 2019 European heatwave, and can also intensify these natural disasters. For example, human-driven warming was linked to intense rainfall in Hurricane Harvey and the exceptionally dry vegetation that fueled the 2025 Los Angeles fires.