SCIENCE

What do JWST’s “red monster” galaxies mean for cosmology? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Nov, 2024

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These three “red monster” galaxies, found just 1 billion years after the hot Big Bang, are dusty, massive objects with more than 100 billion solar masses worth of stars inside. Unlike more modern massive galaxies, where no more than 20% of their gas has been converted into stars, these galaxies are two-to-three times more efficient, raising questions about how they formed and grew up to exhibit these apparent properties. (Credit: NASA/CSA/ESA, M. Xiao & P. A. Oesch (University of Geneva), G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute), Dawn JWST Archive)

The most massive early galaxies grew up faster, and have more stars, than astronomers expected, according to JWST. What does it all mean?

Ever since JWST first opened its eyes on the deep, distant Universe, it’s showed us objects that we didn’t expect we’d find. Sure, we expected a whole host of cosmic record-breakers, including the “most distant” example of many different types of object. JWST has already shown us the most distant:

along with many more stupendous cosmic finds. One of the biggest surprises were the sheer number of ultra-distant galaxies, both bright and faint, found in the first ~1 billion years of cosmic history: the so-called little red dots. If the Universe grew up the way we thought, how could there be so many of these galaxies at such early stages of cosmic history?

The eventual explanation was four-fold: JWST was cleaner and more precise than expected, resulting in better overall performance. We also needed to invoke higher-resolution simulations to better predict these rare cosmic overdensities…

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WisconsinDigitalNews,com3 weeks ago

0 1 minute read