What happened to those "little red dots" Webb observed?

When the James Webb Space Telescope first turned its gaze toward the cosmos, it began peering back in time to galaxies that existed during the universe's earliest days. In December 2022, something unexpected appeared in its deep-field surveys: multiple faint objects glowing as "little red dots" across the cosmic backdrop.

These mysterious LRDs (little red dots) immediately caught astronomers' attention. While the scientific community agrees they're likely compact early galaxies, what makes them glow so intensely red remains a puzzle. It's like finding tiny, crimson embers scattered across the darkness of the newborn universe.

Researchers are divided on the redness mystery. The leading "stellar-only" hypothesis suggests these dots are dense clusters of young stars, born in furious bursts of creation, surrounded by thick clouds of dust that absorb blue light and leave only crimson hues to escape.

"These objects are time capsules from when the universe was less than 10% of its current age," explains Dr. Elena Rodriguez, an astrophysicist not involved in the study. "Their intense redness could tell us how the first generations of stars lived and died."

As JWST continues its mission, astronomers are collecting more data to understand whether dust, stellar composition, or cosmic expansion causes this striking crimson glow. Each observation brings us closer to understanding how the universe's first luminous objects shaped the cosmos we know today.

Read the original story on Phys.org.