I want to learn more about 'little red dots'. In March last year, astronomers were shocked to find these objects in the very early universe, just 600 million years after the Big Bang. That seemed too soon for galaxies to form.

Now Avi Loeb has a theory to explain them.

Aliens!

Just kidding. It's amazing how he's managed to discredit himself so thoroughly. But he's had some good ideas and may continue to do so. This new work was done with Fabio Pacucci at Harvard.

Their theory is that little red dots formed from the collapse of dark matter clouds that happened to have low angular momentum. Most of the dark matter clouds spin around too fast to collapse quickly. They collapse more slowly - and pull visible matter along with them, creating the galaxies we see.

(That at least is the standard theory. We need dark matter to explain galaxy formation and many other things.)

(1/2)