James Webb Telescope Catches Glimpse of Possible First-Ever Dark Stars: Update
Editor’s note: The publication referenced in this article, which was originally published on July 14, 2023, has received the Cozzarelli Prize, acknowledging papers that reflect scientific excellence and originality. The co-authors will be recognized at an awards ceremony during the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting this month.
Stars beam brightly out of the darkness of space thanks to fusion, atoms melding together and releasing energy. But what if there’s another way to power a star?
A team of three astrophysicists — Katherine Freese at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Cosmin Ilie and Jillian Paulin ’23 at Colgate University — analyzed images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and found three bright objects that might be “dark stars,” theoretical objects much bigger and brighter than our sun, powered by particles of dark matter annihilating. If confirmed, dark stars could reveal the nature of dark matter, one of the deepest unsolved problems in all of physics.
“Discovering a new type of star is pretty interesting all by itself, but discovering it’s dark matter that’s powering this — that would be huge,” said Freese, director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Jeff and Gail Kodosky Endowed Chair in physics at UT Austin.
Although dark matter makes up about 25% of the universe, its nature has eluded scientists. Scientists believe it consists of a new type of elementary particle, and the hunt to detect such particles is on. Among the leading candidates are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. When they collide, these particles annihilate themselves, depositing heat into collapsing clouds of hydrogen and converting them into brightly shining dark stars. The identification of supermassive dark stars would open up the possibility of learning about the dark matter based on their observed properties.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Follow-up observations from JWST of the objects’ spectroscopic properties — including dips or excess of light intensity in certain frequency bands — could help confirm whether these candidate objects are indeed dark stars.
Confirming the existence of dark stars might also help solve a problem created by JWST: There seem to be too many large galaxies too early in the universe to fit the predictions of the standard model of cosmology.
“It’s more likely that something within the standard model needs tuning, because proposing something entirely new, as we did, is always less probable,” Freese said. “But if some of these objects that look like early galaxies are actually dark stars, the simulations of galaxy formation agree better with observations.”
The three candidate dark stars (JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0) were originally identified as galaxies in December 2022 by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). Using spectroscopic analysis, the JADES team confirmed the objects were observed at times ranging from about 320 million to 400 million years after the Big Bang, making them some of the earliest objects ever seen.
“When we look at the James Webb data, there are two competing possibilities for these objects,” Freese said. “One is that they are galaxies containing millions of ordinary, population-III stars. The other is that they are dark stars. And believe it or not, one dark star has enough light to compete with an entire galaxy of stars.”
Dark stars could theoretically grow to be several million times the mass of our sun and up to 10 billion times as bright as the sun.
“We predicted back in 2012 that supermassive dark stars could be observed with JWST,” said Ilie, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Colgate University. “As shown in our recently published PNAS article, we already found three supermassive dark star candidates when analyzing the JWST data for the four high redshift JADES objects spectroscopically confirmed by Curtis-Lake et al, and I am confident we will soon identify many more.”
The idea for dark stars originated in a series of conversations between Freese and Doug Spolyar, at the time a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They wondered: What does dark matter do to the first stars to form in the universe? Then they reached out to Paolo Gondolo, an astrophysicist at the University of Utah, who joined the team. After several years of development, they published their first paper on this theory in the journal Physical Review Letters in 2008.
Together, Freese, Spolyar, and Gondolo developed a model that goes something like this: At the centers of early protogalaxies, there would be very dense clumps of dark matter, along with clouds of hydrogen and helium gas. As the gas cooled, it would collapse and pull in dark matter along with it. As the density increased, the dark matter particles would increasingly annihilate, adding more and more heat, which would prevent the gas from collapsing all the way down to a dense enough core to support fusion as in an ordinary star. Instead, it would continue to gather more gas and dark matter, becoming big, puffy, and much brighter than ordinary stars. Unlike ordinary stars, the power source would be evenly spread out, rather than concentrated in the core. With enough dark matter, dark stars could grow to be several million times the mass of our sun and up to 10 billion times as bright as the sun.
Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics program and the Vetenskapsradet (Swedish Research Council) at the Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics at Stockholm University.
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Kaminski arrived at Colgate in April of 2023 from Paul Smith’s College, where he was director of student life and housing. To his work in the Dean of the College division, he brings experience in mediation, coaching and feedback, performance management, and effective management practices. Kaminski is also an ultramarathon runner. Hancock Commons Professor Beth Parks will take over for University Librarian Courtney Young in Hancock Commons, joining Lyosha Gorshkov, director of LGBTQ+ Initiatives, who joined the commons last year. Parks received her bachelor’s degree in physics with a certificate in theater and dance from Princeton University. She earned her masters and PhD in physics at the University of California at Berkeley. Since arriving at Colgate in 1997, she has taught courses across the physics curriculum, including classes on quantum mechanics and renewable energy. She has also served as a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Mbarara, Uganda. Parks is currently the editor of the American Journal of Physics. The Commons Spirit Ciccone Commons opened in 2015, and the University inaugurated Hancock Commons in 2016. Colegrove and Brown Commons welcomed their first students in 2017. 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- Ivory Tower Comes to ColgateIvory Tower Comes to Colgate kputman@colgate.edu As part of the Ivory Tower on the Road series, Colgate University will host an episode of WCNY’s longest-running television series April 17 in Colgate Memorial Chapel. The hour-long live-to-tape episode will feature discussions on current events and local issues with panelists Anirban Acharya, Ben Baughman, Barbara Fought, Nina Moore, Tara Ross, Ty Seidule, and Chad Sparber hosted by David Chanatry. “Ivory Tower is a model for how to have well-reasoned debates about controversial topics, and from multiple academic and political angles,” says Nina Moore, Colgate professor of political science and director of the forum on race and public policy. Moore has authored Governing Race: Policy, Process and the Politics of Race, The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice, and Toeing the Line: The Supreme Court and Race, and is a regular contributor to the cable news show Capital Tonight in addition to Ivory Tower. Chad Sparber is the W. Bradford Wiley Chair in international economics at Colgate University and an external research fellow at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London, and The Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany. He also directs a forum on economic freedom for Colgate’s Center for Freedom and Western Civilization. “I think the show is at its best when we lean into who we are — professors who use academic data and evidence to support our arguments and help the audience think more deeply about policy issues,” Sparber says. “There are plenty of pundits on TV; few offer that perspective.” The April 17 event is open to all Colgate students, faculty, staff, and community members. Doors to the event will open at 6:00 p.m. and close at 6:45 p.m. for a 7 p.m. recording. The recorded episode will air Friday, April 19, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 20, at 5:30 p.m. on WCNY-TV. Ivory Tower has also visited and recorded shows on the campuses of Hamilton College and Utica University as part of the series.Faculty Profiles News and Updates Faculty & Staff
- Colgate Celebrates Second Annual Arts, Creativity, and Innovation WeekendColgate Celebrates Second Annual Arts, Creativity, and Innovation Weekend mdonofrio@colg… Before a standing-room-only crowd in Colgate Memorial Chapel on Friday, April 5, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman invited the audience to “become part of the performance,” demonstrating how spectators at poetry readings often snap their fingers when they hear something that particularly resonates. “I want to hear you, Colgate,” she explained. “You are part of this, so please feel free to make some noise for me.” Her visit was the keynote event during the second annual celebration of arts, creativity, and innovation at Colgate, which once again brought hundreds of alumni, parents, and friends to campus for performances, workshops, presentations, and panel discussions. Gorman’s talk was sponsored by the Kerschner Family Series Global Leaders at Colgate. Gorman, who graduated with a B.A. in sociology from Harvard, began her talk with three poems from her 2021 bestselling book, Call Us What We Carry. She then joined Professor of English and Africana & Latin American Studies Kezia Page for a lively conversation that ranged in topics from sociology and Black history to her “speech impediment turned superpower" and texting with Oprah. (It was Oprah, Gorman explained, who gifted the young poet with the now-iconic yellow Prada coat for her reading at the 2021 presidential inauguration, along with her “caged bird” ring and earrings — a nod to the late Maya Angelou, she said.) Much of Call Us What We Carry, including the titular work, was inspired by Gorman’s observations during COVID-19 — and the pandemic’s “lasting impact on social trust and human connection,” she said. In her poem “Fugue,” Gorman writes about “the importance of small moments of being in a room or being connected or interacting with people that actually create the fabric of social trust that a nation depends on.” The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, Gorman also shared how dramatically her life changed after delivering her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” before millions as part of President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021. “I remember stepping off the podium. I was like, ‘Oh, that went better than I expected,’ and I remember … looking at my phone, and it was basically on fire. I literally couldn't even hold it,” she said. “And I think I'm still processing that change, what that is, what that did to me, what that did to my relationships, and what that did to my craft. I'm just trying to handle that growth with as much intentionality and grace as I can.” Prior to the Gorman keynote, the weekend’s events began in the chapel on Thursday, when former University president Rebecca Chopp joined Douglas Johnson, dean of academic and curricular affairs and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Ellen Kraly, professor of geography and environmental studies, for a discussion on Alzheimer's disease. Chopp, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago, shared how she has coped mentally and physically in her book, Still Me: Accepting Alzheimer’s Without Losing Yourself. On Friday afternoon, campus guests participated in a series of faculty-led, ACI-focused workshops. Hosted by faculty in music, computer science, art and art history, earth and environmental geosciences, peace and conflict studies, museum studies, and theater, students, alumni, and guests experienced Colgate’s innovative arts curriculum firsthand through experiments and improvisation. Other Friday events included a talk with Ann Pancake, author of the award-winning novel Strange as the Weather Has Been, part of the Dark Skies in Appalachia symposium. The Future of Middle Campus Saturday’s program began with a panel discussion featuring arts and innovation faculty members and alumni: Aaron Gember-Jacobson, associate professor of computer science, chair of the department of computer science; Jeffrey Sharp ’89, executive director, The Gotham Film and Media Institute; Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield, assistant professor of film and media studies; Ryan Chase, assistant professor of music; Christian DuComb, associate dean of the faculty for faculty recruitment and development and associate professor of theater; and Julian Farrior ’93, CEO and founder, Sunblink Entertainment. Mary Simonson, the Daniel C. Benton ’80 Endowed Chair in arts, creativity, and innovation, professor of film & media studies and women's, gender, and sexuality studies, served as moderator. The panelists shared their thoughts on how the new Bernstein Hall — the former Benton Center, at the heart of a new Middle Campus — will help foster collaboration and innovation across disciplines and inspire student and faculty creativity. “We're thinking really carefully about arts and technology and the fact that these two things are increasingly impossible to separate out,” said Simonson. “That's something that many of us in our work think about all the time — how we can help our students understand that those two worlds are increasingly one world.” Student entrepreneurs, including Chayce Canty ’27, presented their ventures during the TIA Showcase. Exploring Innovative Student Ventures At Saturday’s Thought Into Action Entrepreneur Showcase, presented by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, student and alumni entrepreneurs presented their ventures at booth displays. They competed for investment certificates (called “iggies”) given to attendees, with the instructions to award their dollars to the start-ups most worthy of their investment. The informal showcase was followed by the presentation of the Colgate Entrepreneur of the Year Award to Craig Hatkoff ’76, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival and the Disruptor Awards. In his acceptance remarks, Hatkoff shared his insight into the rise of AI and how budding entrepreneurs should think about tools like ChatGPT. “The winners in this coming chaos and tumult will be the people who can tell the stories the best,” said Hatkoff. “Storytelling is humanity’s killer app.” In the “Shark Tank” portion of the event, five groups of student and alumni entrepreneurs presented their ventures, which included a line of farm-grown lavender products, a collectible sports card resale business, and a soy-free soy sauce. The winner and the recipient of a $5,000 prize as chosen by the panel of entrepreneur judges: Pair + Care, a student-run childcare service founded by Chayce Canty ’27, Maddie Theveny ’27, and Henry Galicich ’27. Judges praised the students for their “confident pitch with elements of humility, which is exactly what we see in founders,” noted judge Don De Laria. Pair + Care was also the first-place winner of the “iggie” investment game, taking home an additional $605 to grow their venture. The TIA Showcase also featured the first live performance by the student-led Colgate Symphonic Band. Other events on Saturday included the annual spring a cappella concert with the Mantiphondrakes, the Swinging ’Gates, and the Colgate Thirteen. On Sunday, guests took in a lesson in the Japanese Way of Tea in the newly renovated tea room in Lawrence Hall led by Ruriko Yamakawa, a certified instructor of the Omote-senke Japanese Tea Tradition. The weekend’s final event was a performance from the Colgate Chamber Players, directed by Professor of Music and Africana & Latin American Studies Laura Klugherz. In his remarks before the TIA Showcase, President Brian Casey shared his vision for the future of arts, creativity and innovation at Colgate — and its burgeoning Middle Campus. “We are just a couple hundred yards away from what will be Bernstein Hall, which is the physical manifestation of an institution embracing creativity in all its expressions,” he said. “From my vantage point, this is a weekend filled with energy, excitement, intelligence, and a sense of the future.”Student ventures receive funding during Entrepreneur Weekend Misty Copeland to Headline Arts, Creativity, and Innovation Weekend Generous Gift Supports Middle Campus Plan for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation Alumni Third Century Arts Entrepreneurship Alumni Faculty & Staff Student ARTS Thought Into Action global leaders