Posted on 12/24/2025 12:23:07 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Although extremely faint, LRDs are now frequently identified in deep observations made for other purposes. A wide-ranging debate is raging about what LRDs may be and what importance they may have. Possible origin hypotheses include accreting supermassive black holes inside clouds of gas and dust, bursts of star formation in young dust-reddened galaxies, and dark matter powered gas clouds. The highlighted images show six nearly featureless LRDs listed under the JWST program that found them, and z, a distance indicator called cosmological redshift. Additionally, searches are underway in our nearby universe to try to find whatever previous LRDs might have become today.
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Explanation: How far away is "redshift six"? Although humans are inherently familiar with distance and time, what is actually measured for astronomical objects is redshift, a color displacement that depends on exactly how energy density has evolved in our universe. Now since cosmological measurements in recent years have led to a concordance on what energy forms pervade our universe, it is now possible to make a simple table relating observed cosmological redshift, labeled "z", with standard concepts of distance and time, including the extrapolated time since the universe began. One such table is listed above, where redshift z is listed in the first and last columns, while the corresponding universe age in billions of years is listed in the central column. To find the meaning of the rest of the columns, please read the accompanying technical paper. Although stars in our galaxy are effectively at cosmological redshift zero, the most distant supernovae seen occur out past redshift one, which the above chart shows occurred when the universe was approximately half its present age. By contrast, the most distant gamma-ray bursts yet observed occur out past redshift six, occurring when the universe was younger than one billion years old, less than 10 percent of its present age.
Pinging the APOD list
🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔
It could be cheeseburgers that got too close to the flame.
HAL...
OPEN the pod bay Doors.
What happened with That Alien
Thingy Fly By?
.
Urine Geller said
Aliens Doing a Drive By.???
Instead of black holes, these are white holes.
No?
Does dark matter have white holes?
The Universe’s “Check Engine” light is on.
Wow.
Some people say there aren’t cheeseburgers out there, but who can ignore this kind of evidence?
Cosmic crunchberries.
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