An international team of astronomers has discovered three supermassive galaxies that existed within the first billion years after the Big Bang. This discovery raises questions about existing models of galaxy formation.
According to current ideas, galaxies gradually formed inside clusters of dark matter after the Big Bang. It captured gas, transforming it into gravitationally bound structures. Subsequently, about 20% of this gas became part of stars.
However, new data refute this idea. They were collected as part of the FRESCO program by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Its unprecedented capabilities have provided astronomers with the ability to systematically study galaxies in the very distant and early Universe.
After analyzing JWST images, the scientists found that most of the early galaxies fit existing models. However, they also found three surprisingly massive galaxies with stellar masses comparable to the modern Milky Way. They form stars almost twice as efficiently as their lower-mass counterparts and more recent galaxies. They have been called “red monsters” because of their high dust content, which gives them a distinct red color in JWST images.
The discovery of red monsters shows that massive galaxies in the early Universe may have been much more efficient at forming stars than their later counterparts, and grew much faster than previously believed. While these results don’t contradict the standard cosmological model, they raise new questions about theories of galaxy formation, in particular the problem of too many overly massive galaxies in the early Universe.
According to the researchers, this means that existing models need to be improved to take into account the unique processes that allowed some early galaxies to form very quickly. Astronomers hope that future observations with JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) will provide additional clues about the red monsters, as well as finding other similar objects.
We previously told you about how JWST found the loneliest quasars in the Universe.
Provided by Phys.org
