Astronomers spot ancient star clusters that shouldn't exist
Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected five impossibly dense star clusters in a galaxy born just 460 million years after the Big Bang. The discovery challenges theories of how the early universe assembled its first stars and could reshape models that predict cosmic evolution and reionization—findings with implications for understanding stellar physics and the universe's foundational structure.
Originaltitel: Bound star clusters observed in a lensed galaxy 460 Myr after the Big Bang
<p>The Cosmic Gems arc is among the brightest and highly magnified galaxies observed at redshift <em>z</em> ≈ 10.2 (ref. <sup>1</sup>). However, it is an intrinsically ultraviolet faint galaxy, in the range of those now thought to drive the reionization of the Universe<sup>2,3,4</sup>. Hitherto the smallest features resolved in a galaxy at a comparable redshift are between a few hundreds and a few tens of parsecs (pc)<sup>5,6</sup>. Here we report JWST observations of the Cosmic Gems. The light of the galaxy is resolved into five star clusters located in a region smaller than 70 pc. They exhibit minimal dust attenuation and low metallicity, ages younger than 50 Myr and intrinsic masses of about 10<sup>6</sup><em>M</em><sub>⊙</sub>. Their lensing-corrected sizes are approximately 1 pc, resulting in stellar surface densities near 10<sup>5</sup><em>M</em><sub>⊙</sub> pc<sup>−2</sup>, three orders of magnitude higher than typical young star clusters in the local Universe<sup>7</sup>. Despite the uncertainties inherent to the lensing model, they are consistent with being gravitationally bound stellar systems, that is, proto-globular clusters. We conclude that star cluster formation and feedback likely contributed to shaping the properties of galaxies during the epoch of reionization.</p>