Across 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, humanity has grown accustomed to a tidy origin story — but the James Webb Space Telescope is now returning images that quietly unsettle it. Galaxies observed just 300 to 400 million years after the Big Bang appear far more composed and developed than our best theoretical models ever anticipated, bearing the hallmarks of long, steady star formation rather than the frantic, chaotic assembly scientists expected. The universe's age is not in question, but the pace and efficiency of its earliest creative acts may need to be reimagined. What Webb is offer