Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37433001.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.2305762120 and PMC identifier 10372643.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The first generation of stars in the universe is yet to be observed. There are two leading theories for those objects that mark the beginning of the cosmic dawn: hydrogen burning Population III stars and Dark Stars, made of hydrogen and helium but powered by dark matter heating. The latter can grow to become supermassive (<i>M</i><sub>⋆</sub> ∼ 10<sup>6</sup><i>M</i><sub>⊙</sub>) and extremely bright (<i>L</i> ∼ 10<sup>9</sup><i>L</i><sub>⊙</sub>). We show that each of the following three objects-JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0 (at redshifts <i>z</i> ∈ [11, 14])-are consistent with a Supermassive Dark Star interpretation, thus identifying the first Dark Star candidates.