How the Webb Telescope is Influencing Astrophysicists’ Theories

Article excerpt

Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine Our understanding of the universe is changing as new images from the James Webb Space Telescope uncover new objects. But, what does this mean for astrophysics? Quanta Magazine explains how astrophysicists are developing theories in response to these new images. Mason, an astrophysicist at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, has lately been filling pages with sketches of “little red dots,” perplexing objects discovered by the hundreds in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Little red dots were never seen before the telescope came online in 2022. But we now know that they started to appear in significant numbers roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang.