By Cyrus Law ’27
Despite only orbiting the sun for 2 years, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a plethora of high-quality images that the previous Hubble Telescope failed to. In December of 2022, the JWST identified four galaxies (JADES-GS-z10-0, JADES-GS-z11-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z13-0) high in redshift, indicating that these galaxies are extremely distant and therefore old. However, a closer look suggests that the latter 3 of these 4 galaxies may be supermassive versions of the theoretical dark stars.
The concept of dark stars was first proposed by a team of university professors from New York and Texas in 2007. These dark stars are thought to have existed early in the universe and are possibly the first stars created. Even though both dark stars and regular stars are composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, dark stars contain a small fraction of dark matter, which does not interact with light (hence the name, “dark” matter), is not affected by electromagnetic forces, yet still has mass and volume. Normally, stars are powered by nuclear fusion, a process where extreme pressure and high temperatures cause hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium, releasing large amounts of energy. However, even though dark stars also contain large amounts of hydrogen and helium, they are instead powered by the self-annihilation of dark matter particles. Annihilation is the process in which matter and antimatter collide, releasing incredible amounts of energy in the form of light and heat. The sheer heat prevents the dark star from collapsing and being as compact as a modern star. As a result, dark stars have lower pressures and much greater volumes, preventing the aforementioned process of nuclear fusion which powers normal stars. Unlike the name suggests, dark stars can shine ten billion (1010) times brighter than the sun and reach impressive sizes of ten million (107) times our sun’s mass.
For now, though, the celestial bodies detected by the JWST are not proven to be dark stars. However, there will be influential ramifications if the bodies are confirmed to be dark stars. Firstly, scientists, for the first time, could observe dark matter. Additionally, the existence of dark stars could explain the origin of the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, a mystery that remains unsolved today.
Read more articles like this in our Fall 2024 Issue!
