News Astronomy

Mysterious ‘little red dot’ galaxies have a possible origin story

The tiny galaxies may have been born with little spin, letting gas funnel toward their centers

Six-panel image showing red dots against a black background, each a distant galaxy observed in infrared.

Compact ruddy galaxies (six shown in these images from the James Webb Space Telescope) known as little red dots may have originated in slowly spinning dark matter halos, astronomers say.

Dale Kocevski/Colby College, STScI/NASA, ESA, CSA

By Ken Croswell

The early universe is speckled with little red dots, and now we may have an idea of how these peculiar galaxies originated: They were born with almost no spin.