What is it about?
“Dark stars” have been proposed as stars in the early universe that are powered by the annihilation of dark matter within a hydrogen cloud. Such dark stars could grow to become objects a million times the size of the Sun and a billion times as bright as the Sun. The authors of this study report three objects imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope that are candidate dark stars. The telescope’s resolution is insufficient to discern whether the objects are point sources of light, such as puffy dark stars or an entire galaxy.
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Why is it important?
The authors suggest that future observations of gravitationally magnified objects may enable measurements that could confirm the existence of dark stars.
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This page is a summary of: Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2305762120.
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