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…
