JWST data suggest heavy elements existed 500 million years after the Big Bang

University of Arizona astronomers report in Nature Astronomy that James Webb Space Telescope observations show oxygen and carbon in the early universe far sooner than expected—about 500 million years after the Big Bang, when the cosmos was roughly 3% of its current age. First author Yongda Zhu says galaxies not only made those elements but dispersed them very early, possibly seeding other galaxies, which may explain why astronomers struggle to find the first stars in the pristine hydrogen-and-helium picture they expected.