"Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos" by Richard Panek
Review by Mason Smyth, Senior Library Assistant at Southwest Library
Rarely does a scientific advancement fundamentally shift our perspective of reality. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) did just that. In “Pillars of Creation,” Richard Panek details the journey of the JWST and its discoveries, telling the story of a mission that almost never was.
Panek expertly navigates us through the political and scientific inner workings of how JWST came to be with extraordinary detail. He highlights moments of hope with moments of failure, showing that with enough perseverance from our innate desire to know our place in the cosmos, JWST was able to become an overwhelming success.
The farther we gaze into the universe, the farther we see into the past. The JWST has allowed us to observe objects from as early as 180 million years after the Big Bang. If the cosmos were a 100-year-old person, JWST has shown us its toddler years.
The discoveries that scientists made by observing our early universe have given us new understandings of how we came to exist. "Pillars of Creation" gives the reader a thorough account of these discoveries in a writing style that non-scientists can understand while maintaining the inherent sense of profound amazement that space exploration ignites.