James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Webb Finds Early Galaxies Weren't Too Big for Their Britches After All

Did Webb’s look at early galaxies really break cosmology? (Spoiler alert: nope!) The issue? How to explain unexpectedly bright early galaxies. If these galaxies were bright because rapid star formation was making them more massive than they should be, then maybe something was wrong with the standard model of cosmology. New research shows that some of those early galaxies are actually much less massive than they appeared. Much of the light from these galaxies likely comes not from stars, but from hot disks of matter surrounding their central black holes. When the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies rapidly consume the gas that orbits them, friction in the fast-moving gas emits light and heat. As a result the galaxies look much brighter than if the light were just emanating from stars alone. When these outlier galaxies were removed from the data analysis, the remaining galaxies fit the model predictions. Crisis averted! Read more: go.nasa.gov/3Mk8U9a Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin) Image description: Hundreds of small galaxies against the black background of space. Several white spiral galaxies are near image center. Most of the galaxies are various shades of orange and red, and many are too tiny to discern a shape. A handful of foreground stars show Webb's six diffraction spikes. Image & Description by NASA