Unveiling stellar birth in a cosmologically common cradle

We will use the unparalleled sensitivity, resolution and wavelength coverage of JWST to perform a complete census of the embedded protostellar population down to 0.1 Lsun in the most massive, dense and quiescent molecular gas cloud in the Galaxy with unambiguous signs of very early star formation. Lying in the Central Molecular Zone of the Galaxy with 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher gas density, temperature and pressure than regions in the disk, the cloud's properties are similar to the global gas conditions in galaxies at the peak of the cosmic star formation rate density (z = 1 - 3), so represent more cosmologically "typical" conditions for star and planet formation/evolution than Solar neighbourhood clouds. Combined with ALMA data, the JWST observations will enable us to determine how these initial conditions affect the formation and subsequent evolution of protostellar systems, and thereby answer fundamental open questions related to the universality of star formation laws/relations and the dependence on environment of protostellar formation and evolution.