Juan Garcia-Bellido

The James Webb Space Telescope peered into an era when the universe was less than a billion years old and spotted strange objects—'little red dots.' These are black holes with masses of millions of suns, but in very compact, chemically pristine galaxies. Standard scenarios can't grow such heavyweights that early.

The Universe is humming, but our ears catch only the bass. LIGO hears the rumble of black hole mergers — the infrasound of space. Higher up, in the gigahertz range, the flutes and violins of primordial gravity ring out.