Mysterious tiny red dots from the James Webb Space Telescope may be the universe’s first stars about to collapse

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doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae32f3
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#tiny red dots

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed stunning surprises about the early universe, and one of the most intriguing are the so-called “tiny red dots

” These objects appear as compact, extremely bright points in deep images of the distant cosmos, captured when the universe was between approximately 650 million and 1.8 billion years old-that is, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Unlike ordinary galaxies, these dots are tiny, much smaller than the typical galaxies we know today.

They shine with extraordinary intensity and exhibit a striking reddish color, caused by a characteristic pattern in their spectra: a “V-shaped trough” that makes the light appear redder.

Furthermore, they do not emit detectable X-rays, something we would normally expect from active supermassive black holes, and their spectra show few lines of heavy chemical elements (metals), containing basically hydrogen and helium-exactly what is expected of primordial material, not yet enriched by previous stars.

For a long time, scientists debated what these objects could be.

One strong hypothesis was that they were small galaxies harboring supermassive black holes already growing in the primordial cosmos.

Another idea considered the direct collapse of enormous clouds of virgin gas forming black holes without going through the stellar phase.

However, new research suggests an even more fascinating explanation: these red dots may, in fact, be gigantic first-generation stars-the so-called Population III stars-with incredibly high masses, from thousands to almost a million times the mass of the Sun.

These primordial stars would be formed entirely of gas composed almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, without heavy metals.

Due to their colossal size, they would burn fuel extremely quickly and intensely, shining with immense brilliance, but having a very short lifespan: in some extreme cases, only a few thousand or tens of thousands of years.

Recent theoretical models, developed by astronomers such as Devesh Nandal and Avi Loeb, are able to reproduce with good precision the observed brightness, the red color, and the shape of the spectrum of these objects.

The “V-shaped fall,” for example, would be caused by the atmosphere of these supermassive stars or by the loss of material that forms a kind of layer around them, and not necessarily by dust blocking the light.

If this hypothesis is correct, these small red dots would represent the last moments of life of these monstrous stars, exactly when they are on the verge of total gravitational collapse to give rise to supermassive black holes.

They would therefore be a kind of “parent” of the first giant black holes that we find today in the center of galaxies.

The absence of X-rays and strong chemical lines reinforces this idea, since pure Population III stars would not have accretion disk activity like active black holes.

Despite the enthusiasm for the model, there are challenges.

These stars have such a short lifespan that it would be difficult to explain why the James Webb telescope detected hundreds of them in different regions of the sky.

Therefore, many astronomers continue to consider the possibility of direct black hole formation.

To solve the mystery once and for all, more detailed future observations will be necessary: “”precise radio measurements (with telescopes like the future Square Kilometre Array) to capture signals that dust may hide, or refined spectroscopic analyses that differentiate chemical signatures, such as the presence of nitrogen (more expected in massive stars) or neon (more common in active black holes).

In any case, these enigmatic red dots are helping science to unravel how the first stars and the first black holes arose and shaped the young universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to prove that the primordial cosmos holds far stranger and more interesting secrets than we ever imagined.

Published in 03/10/2026 01h33

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Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.

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