Speaker
Description
Early findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) defied the predictions of the 𝚲CDM model of cosmology. The major concern was the large overabundance of very massive, very high-redshift galaxies and quasars, at which time the universe was only a few hundred million years old. There are two major models for the nature of the first stars in the universe: Population III stars and Supermassive Dark Stars (SMDS). SMDS, in particular, offer a solution to the aforementioned paradoxes. Unlike Population III stars, SMDS are powered by dark matter annihilations, can grow to be a million times the mass of the sun, and shine a billion times brighter than the sun, and in fact as bright as an entire galaxy. At the end of their lives, SMDS would collapse directly to a black hole, and therefore could give rise to the first quasars observed. We have identified the first candidates for SMDS using the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES): JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0.
