Mysterious red object seen by Webb Telescope could refine origin of galaxies

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered tiny red objects that are offering fresh insights into the possible formation of galaxies like the Milky Way in the early cosmos.

Using JWST’s sophisticated infrared capabilities, a global team of scientists—including Penn State researchers—studied these mysterious “little red dots,” which may be a brand-new class of celestial object known as “black hole stars.” According to their findings, which were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, these objects could contribute to the understanding of the genesis and development of galaxies.

The ‘little red dots’ were first thought to represent mature galaxies that existed 500–700 million years after the Big Bang and were similar in age to the Milky Way today. The scientists decided to refer to these objects as “universe breakers” because it was difficult to understand how such mature galaxies could exist at such an early point in cosmic history.

These red specks, however, were brighter and denser than one might expect from a typical galaxy. Bingjie Wang, a Princeton NASA Hubble Fellow, claims that “The night sky of such a galaxy would be dazzlingly bright,” and, “If this interpretation holds, it implies that stars formed through extraordinary processes that have never been observed before.”

Astronomers used around 60 hours of JWST observation time between January and December 2024 to gather spectra from 4,500 distant galaxies in order to conduct additional research, producing one of the telescope’s largest spectroscopic datasets. Spectral research showed that instead of the hot gas usually associated with black holes, the light from these objects was dominated by cool gas, like the atmospheres of low-mass stars.