These massive stars could explain Webb’s strangest galaxies

Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low metallicities, potentially allowing massive stars to retain more material and evolve in unexpected ways. The team also found large differences in iron abundance, a key ingredient in stellar winds and supernovae.

These massive stars could explain Webb’s strangest galaxies. These massive stars could explain Webb’s strangest galaxies Science News from research organizations These massive stars could explain Webb’s strangest galaxies Hubble has uncovered a surprising change in massive stars that could help explain why the universe’s earliest galaxies look so strange. Once the pressure and temperature in the center of the cloud were high enough, hydrogen atoms began to fuse together, releasing energy in the form of light.

Schaller Astronomers are finding that the first generations of galaxies do not always behave the way existing models predict. One possible reason is that their most massive stars may have evolved very differently from massive stars in the modern Milky Way. A new survey led by the University of Utah is using the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate those differences.

The project, known as the Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars (TEMPOS), relies on ultraviolet (UV) measurements from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) to examine massive stars in nearby galaxies that resemble the environments found in the early universe.