At the edge of the solar system's middle distance, some three billion miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope has witnessed what astronomers have long theorized but rarely seen: an icy body crossing the threshold between dormancy and life, becoming a comet. The object, 450P/LONEOS, appears to have been stirred awake by Saturn's gravitational hand, its frozen interior beginning to breathe out gas and dust for the first time. In catching this moment, Webb has given science not a model or a prediction, but a memory — a record of transformation as it happened.