Little Red Dots update

A new study argues tiny slow spinning galaxies in dark matter halos explain the faint red signals seen by Webb.

Astronomers Solve the Little Red Dots Mystery

Two years after the James Webb Space Telescope began its work, astronomers flagged a puzzling set of faint red dots in the early universe. They originate from about one billion years after the Big Bang and remain hard to classify because they are both very faint and small. The leading idea was that they are unusually compact galaxies, but their small size makes that explanation hard to reconcile with known physics and their lack of bright signatures.

A new study by Avi Loeb and Fabio Pacucci pushes the idea that these red dots are real galaxies that have not yet spun up to full speed. They link the dots to dark matter halos that occupy the slowest end of the spin distribution, arguing that this keeps the galaxies compact for longer. If true, the dots become a window into the early spin history of halos and the first steps of galaxy growth.

But other teams point to a different possibility, calling them black hole stars: an active supermassive black hole surrounded by a thick gas shell that dims most light. The low-spin idea does not rule out central black holes, yet it emphasizes halo rotation as a key signal guiding how we read the data. The field now faces a clear split between two credible interpretations and a test bed for future observations.

Highlights

As new data arrive, the early universe story will sharpen and change shape.