Monday, April 14, 2025 3:30pm to 4:30pm
About this Event
1414 Circle Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996
https://physics.utk.edu/news-events/colloquia-series/The James Webb Space Telescope is the culmination of 30 years of planning, 20 years of construction, and 11 billion dollars of funding — and it was designed specifically to perform the first systematic exploration of stars, galaxies, and black holes in the early universe. This first systematic exploration is happening now; in our lives. In this physics colloquium, Joel Leja of Penn State University will discuss some of the early, stunning, and sometimes tentative, discoveries made in Webb’s first deep fields, measuring the ancient light from early galaxies and black holes originating near the edge of the observable universe. He will in particular discuss the latest observational constraints on the new, mysterious, very bright, surprisingly common, and so-far-inscrutable objects at the edge of the universe: “little red dots”. Are they overly massive and/or old galaxies, `overmassive` supermassive black holes arising far earlier than expected – or perhaps something else entirely?