{"id":34939,"date":"2023-07-17T10:37:55","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T09:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=34939"},"modified":"2023-07-17T10:37:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T09:37:55","slug":"james-webb-space-telescope-observes-first-ever-dark-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/james-webb-space-telescope-observes-first-ever-dark-stars\/34939\/","title":{"rendered":"James Webb Space Telescope observes first-ever \u2018dark stars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
Observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) initially identified these objects as galaxies. However, the team now thinks these may be dark stars – theoretical objects that are much bigger and brighter than our Sun, powered by particles of dark matter annihilating.<\/p>\n
If confirmed, dark stars could reveal the nature of dark matter, one of physics\u2019 deepest unsolved problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although dark matter makes up about 25% of the universe, its nature has eluded scientists. Scientists believe it consists of a new type of elementary particle, and the hunt to detect such particles is on.<\/p>\n \u201cDiscovering a new type of star is pretty interesting all by itself, but discovering that it\u2019s dark matter powering this would be huge,\u201d said Katherine Freese, director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Jeff and Gail Kodosky Endowed Chair in Physics at UT Austin.<\/p>\n A corresponding paper, \u2018Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST<\/a>,\u2019 is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n Follow-up observations from JWST of the objects\u2019 spectroscopic properties \u2013 including dips or excess of light intensity in certain frequency bands \u2013 could help confirm whether these candidate objects are indeed dark stars.<\/p>\n Confirming the existence of these stars could also solve an earlier problem created by the James Webb Space Telescope. It seems to have observed too many large galaxies in the early Universe<\/a>, which doesn\u2019t fit the Standard Model of cosmology.<\/p>\n Freese explained: It\u2019s more likely that something within the standard model needs tuning because proposing something entirely new, as we did, is always less probable.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if some of these objects that look like early galaxies are actually dark stars, the simulations of galaxy formation agree better with observations.\u201d<\/p>\n The three candidate dark stars (JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0) were initially identified as galaxies in December 2022 by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES).<\/p>\nObserving dark stars could be a gamechanger<\/h3>\n
What did the James Webb Space Telescope detect?<\/h3>\n