Three possible dark stars have been detected, a celestial body that was only a hypothesis

@ElentirENG ES 7·17·2023 · 23:38 0

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Astrophysicists Katherine Freese, Peter Bodenheimer, Douglas Spolyar, and Paolo Góndolo proposed the hypothesis of dark stars in 2008. According to this hypothesis, it would be "the very first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe: the first stars to form", stars that would be "powered by heating from dark matter (DM) annihilation instead of fusion." Of these hypothetical celestial bodies, they noted: "Dark stars look quite different from standard metal-free stars without DM heating: they are far more massive (e.g., ~800 M☉ for 100 GeV WIMPs), cooler, and larger and can be distinguished in future observations."

In April, Katherine Freese, an astrophysicist at the University of Austin in Texas and co-author of that hypothesis, published a report with Cosmin Ilie and Jillian Paulin pointing out three possible candidates for dark stars that would have been detected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) . As noted by Sci News in the past Saturday, the candidates are JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0, identified by the JWST in December 2022 as galaxies.

This Monday, Reuters has released this image of the possible candidates, released by NASA. This possible discovery would be enormously important for learning more about dark matter, a hypothetical form of matter that is estimated to form up to 85% of the matter in the universe and whose existence is deduced from its effects gravitational This dark matter is an absolute mystery, since its possible origin is completely unknown, and its study is not easy, since it would be made up of invisible particles.

Dr Freese has pointed out that "if some of these objects that look like early galaxies are actually dark stars, the simulations of galaxy formation agree better with observations." We must take into account that with these observations we are turning our eyes to a very remote past, since it is calculated that these dark stars date from 320 to 400 million years after the Big Bang, which makes them ranks among the oldest objects in the universe detected so far.

Furthermore, Dr. Freese adds: "When we look at the Webb data, there are two competing possibilities for these objects.One is that they are galaxies containing millions of ordinary, Population III stars. The other is that they are dark stars. And believe it or not, one dark star has enough light to compete with an entire galaxy of stars."

Lab 360 He has just published a complete video explaining this finding, its details and its implications:

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Main image: Sci News.