2025年12月24日
Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JWST; Dale Kocevski (Colby College)
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.
Tomorrow’s picture: Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree
神秘现象: 早期宇宙中的小红点
影像提供: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JWST; Dale Kocevski (Colby College)
说明: 这些小红点（LRDs）是什么？没有人知道。去年才被发现的LRDs，如今已被詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜在早期宇宙中侦测到数百个。虽然极其微弱，但LRDs现在经常在为其他目的进行的深空观测中被辨识出来。关于LRDs可能是什么以及它们可能具有的重要性，正在进行广泛的辩论。可能的起源假说包括：气体和尘埃云内部吸积的超大质量黑洞、年轻尘埃红化星系中爆发的恒星形成，以及暗物质驱动的气体云。图中突显了六个几乎没有特征的LRD，这些LRD是该詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜计画中发现的，其中z是一个称为宇宙学红移的距离指标。此外，我们也在邻近的宇宙中展开搜寻，试图找到先前的LRD如今可能演化成的天体。
