Ten Thousand Stars and One Small Hand

In December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana on a million-mile journey into deep space. Months later, NASA released its first images — galaxies stacked behind galaxies, stellar nurseries blazing with light older than civilization itself. The photos left seasoned astronomers in tears. Around the same time, Dr. Maria Chen, a neonatal surgeon at Johns Hopkins, was performing heart surgery on a baby born at twenty-four weeks.…