Woven across our universe is a weblike structure of galaxies called the cosmic web. Galaxies are strung along filaments in this vast web, which also contains enormous voids. Now, astronomers using Webb have discovered an early strand of this structure, a long, narrow filament of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes this early thread of the cosmic web will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies.

The same study also probes the properties of eight quasars in the young universe. Scientists determined that the galaxies’ central black holes, which existed less than a billion years after the big bang, range in mass from 600 million to 2 billion times that of our Sun. They are still working to explain how these black holes could grow so large so fast.