The James Webb Space Telescope has detected a cloud of carbon in a galaxy from just 350 million years after the Big Bang, marking the earliest known presence of an element other than hydrogen. "We were surprised to see carbon so early in the universe," said Roberto Maiolino, a professor of experimental astrophysics at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. This discovery challenges previous beliefs that carbon formed about a billion years post-Big Bang. The finding, to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, reveals that early stars may have operated differently, enabling carbon to escape and enrich the universe sooner than expected. This has significant implications for our understanding of the early universe and the potential for early life and could indicate that life might have emerged much earlier and possibly evolved differently than on Earth.