Surprises in the Early Universe from the James Webb Space Telescope:
Overly Massive Galaxies, Overly Massive Black Holes, or Something Entirely New?
The James Webb Space Telescope is the culmination of thirty years of planning, twenty years of construction, and eleven billion dollars of funding — and it was designed specifically to perform the first systematic exploration of stars, galaxies, and black holes in the early universe. Luckily for us, this first systematic exploration is happening now; in our lives. I will discuss some of the early, stunning, and sometimes tentative, discoveries we have made in Webb’s first deep fields, measuring the ancient light from early galaxies and black holes originating near the edge of the observable universe. I will in particular discuss the latest observational constraints on the new, mysterious, very bright, surprisingly common, and so-far-inscrutable objects at the edge of the universe: “little red dots”. Are they overly massive and/or old galaxies, overmassive supermassive black holes arising far earlier than expected – or perhaps something else entirely?